The effect of organizational stress sources on business performance of hotel employees: An application in Kahramanmaras

Hotel business are an ongoing sector that feeds on intense labour and human power. For this reason, difficult working conditions can have negative effects on people. As it is not possible to completely eliminate stress factors in the service sector where human relations are intense, the tourism sector is becoming an extremely stressful occupational group. Because of the simultaneous production and consumption of hotel establishments, working staff must act quickly and meet different expectations and demands. Stressful effects may occur on the employee while meeting the expectations and demands. So, if employee feels under the extreme stress pressure, she will have a bad mood and this mood will reflect both on her relationship with the customer and on the service quality. Feeling under extreme pressure is effective on employee leaving the job, which is seen as an unwanted situation by hotel business. If the employee leaves the job, it will cause direct or indirect costs in terms of business. When all these factors considered, it can be expressible that the stress factor appears to be an inevitable danger factor for hotel businesses (Yıldırım, 2010: 29). The main factor affecting employees' performance is the organizational stress encountered in the business (Örücü vd., 2011: 2). The stress experienced in the work environment is not always negative. A stress free business environment means a field where you work monotonously. An employee who does not have a busy job and has a monotonous environment at work cannot be expected to show a healthy job performance. It is stated by the researchers that certain levels of stress have positive effects on the business (Yılmaz and Ekici, 2003: 9). Hence, experiencing moderate or high level stress will create positive effects on the employee by keeping the employee away from monotony (Yıldırım, 2010: 67). In hotel busıness, stress should be carefully managed so that both business and employees can benefit from this. Although it is known that there are four different assumptions regarding stress and performance, these are briefly: The relationship between performance and stress is inverse with each other, organizational stress can increase work performance, and organizational stress has no effect on work performance (Gökgöz, 2013: 60). As a result of many studies investigating the relationship between stress and performance, can occur different results (Yılmaz, 2006: 98; Ergül, 2012: 57; Gökgöz ve Altuğ, 2014: 521; Saltık, 2016: 53; Türkmen, 2016: 10; Özbozkurt ve Kırmızısaç, 2019: 290). Because of the workplace environment, work relations, colleague, mission and vision, expectation from work place, personality characteristics and organizational stress sources encountered in the workplace affect the employees differently and reflect differently on their work performance (Gümüştekin and Öztemiz, 2005: 283). Therefore, constructive and positive organizational stress will provide positive contributions to both the employee and the hotel. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of organizational stress sources on work performance in hotel business employees with tourism management certificate operating in Kahramanmaraş. In this context, a survey was conducted for hotel business employees operating in Kahramanmaraş between 02.01.2020 - 15.04.2020. In the study, it was queried that to what extent the organizational stresses experienced by hotel workers had an effect on their work performance. Prepared survey form consists of seven sub-factors including the structure of the work, physical conditions, political, business structure, business relationship, time and work performance. The standard deviation, arithmetic mean, frequency and percentage values of the data obtained from the research were calculated using the quantitative method in the study and Kruskal and Wallos H Test and Mann-Whitney U Test were performed to determine whether there was a significant difference between the variables. Spearman Correlation Test was applied to find out whether there is a relationship between organizational stress factors and job performance. According to the results obtained from the research, it has been determined that the organizational stress levels of the employees in the hotel establishments with tourism operation certificate operating in Kahramanmaraş are medium and high level, there are significant differences in the work performance of the employees according to the characteristıcs of the hotel they work in On the other hand, no significant differences were found according to the variables of age, gender, marital status, the qualification of the hotel worked, monthly average income, the department and position employed, the duration of work in the sector and the current time working at the hotel. In the last part of the study, suggestions were made in the light of the obtained results. Keywords: Hotel Business, Organizational Stress Sources, Work Performance, Kahramanmaraş