Anatomizing Workplace Distress on Employee Performance in Government Entities of Uganda
Keywords:
Employee, performance, government entity, workplace distress, UgandaAbstract
The persistent phenomenon of workplace distress has adversely impacted public value creation in global governance entities especially those in developing countries. Grafted with the emotional, environmental and psychological stressors employees can only perform in an environment divorced of quadruple evil of service delivery (corruption, nepotism, cronyism and profiling) where there a robust anti-workplace distress tactics and protective distress recovery measures. Studies have been elusive in appraising workplace distress and employee performance with no exception for Uganda. With a quantitative approach using a self-administered questionnaire, this study, therefore, comprehensively examines workplace distress for 257 employees of Ugandan government entities during the 2021-2023 period. The study uses descriptive and inferential statistics to analyze the obtained data. First, the findings confirm the validity of the trio distress indicators existence in Uganda used as a proxy for work distress. Second, the empirical findings indicate that all the trio distress indicators can be used in predicting work distress in Uganda. Third, the analysis at the government entity level indicates that the emotional, psychological and environmental factors are significant contributors to work distress; and exhibit the most significant poor performance risk disclosure, particularly during the area profiling pandemic. Policy implications have emerged based on the findings from this study.
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