Occupational Stress and Coping Strategies among Self Financing Arts and Science College Faculties in Erode

The aim of the study is to find out the stress management level of arts and science college teachers in Erode City. The teachers are the assets of any country. They are burdened with the greatest responsibility of „Nation Building‟. The teaching profession has an esteemed place among all professions. However, teaching as a profession at any level is becoming more demanding day by day. Teaching has also become more like a managerial job and is having multi-dimensional job responsibilities. Stress can‟t be avoided, but one can learn how to manage it. Policy makers are advised to analyze the college teacher training and assessment system with the assumption that personal and social characteristics and working conditions may have an effect on college teacher stress. The present paper discusses the various emerging issues of occupational stress among faculties of higher education in India and required management strategies to handle them. Sample teachers were selected for simple random sampling by using lottery method because of easy accessibility and affordability analyzed by using statistical package of simple percentage and chi square analysis


Introduction
Based on various surveys and studies, it is confirmed that occupational stress has become a big problem throughout the world and is steadily increasing.These studies are mainly finding potential sources of stress (stressors), factors of individual differences (moderators/mediators), and consequences of stress.The United Nations Report marked job stress -The 20th Century Disease.Teaching profession was earlier viewed as a low stressful occupation because of regular job, light workloads, flexibility, fixed job responsibilities and other attractions such as foreign trips for conferences and study leaves for higher study and research.However, some recent studies reported that university faculty is among the most stressed occupational group.Research evidences have shown that there is high stress prevailing among teachers of higher educational institutions.
Contemporary management practices, globalization and privatization, increasing use of new technology and knowledge base economy are emerging issues that force universities and higher educational institutes to become internationally competitive.The situation of attaining maintaining and retaining the competitive advantages leads many challenges to faculty members.These challenges have increased work stress among teaching staff of higher education and forced them to work beyond their schedules.The teaching faculties of higher education in India are facing stress due to in-class environment and stress due to heavy demand of other academic and non-academic activities.According to Reddy and Poornima,"Success in managing and preventing stress will depend on the culture in the organization.At university level, the culture of openness and understanding, rather than of criticism, is essential".

EM-2023-5663
1) To analyze the causes of work stress and its impact on faculties in Arts and Science college atmosphere.2) To identify the various factors causing occupational stress among the college faculties.
3) To understand the occupational stress and its impact on the efficiency and effectiveness of work related commitments.4) To identify the methodologies and strategies adopted by the faculty members to overcome the stress.5) To suggest the coping strategies to be adopted by the faculty members at individual level as well as institutional level to minimize the occupational stress.

Scope Of Study
1) The scope of the project is to identify the mental challenges faced by the faculties in the Arts and Science College.
2) The study would be act as a reference for further in depth research on different types of occupational stress and coping strategies among arts and science college faculties.3) To know how the institutions get affected due to stress faced by faculties.4) Notifies the common problems faced by the faculties and also highlighted certain remedial measures to eradicate the problem.

Limitations Of The Study
1.The non-cooperative nature of the people to give information to the researcher.
2. Area of the study which covers only Erode District.
3. The faculties were not willing to disclose their views openly.4. Samples taken are of only 150 faculties.It can also act as a constraint in the study.

Research Methodology
The research problem calls for the descriptive types of research.The sampling design carried out is convenience sampling.The sample size for the survey is 150 respondents of who are working in Arts and Science College.Primary data is source from which the researcher collects the data from the respondent"s through personal interview which is widely used and well-known method of survey, through a wellstructured questionnaire.Secondary data is collected from various sources like articles and websites.In this survey, the questionnaire consisted of various types of questions say Open-ended questions, Close-ended or Dichotomous questions, and Multiple-choice questions.

Statistical Tools
The data were consolidated in relevant table under relevant headers.Statistical Techniques such as Percentage analysis and Chi-square Analysis were used to analyze the data.

Hypothesis:
There is a Significant Relationship between Gender and Management of personal commitment There is a Significant Relationship between age and anger management

Review of Literature
As said by Ansari and Singh made an attempt to explore the role of demographic variables to the nature of stress experienced by the faculty member in an agriculture university.The study comprised a sample of 235 faculty members (23 professors, 74 associate and 138 assistant professors).The professors were either in moderate or in high stress categories as compared to associate and assistant professors.As per Upadhyay and Singh, comparatively the occupational stress level experienced by the 20 college teachers and 20 executives showed that teachers significant higher levels of stress than executives on intrinsic impoverishment and status factors.According to Nema Geetaet study, the teachers are unsatisfied with their job due to changing job environments, insecurity of job, poor salary, biasness in promotions, work overload, role conflict, powerlessness, motiveless, harassment etc.
Manvel Raj et al considered fifteen Chennai based self-financing Engineering Colleges with 1200-1800 students.They analyzed both the external and internal causes of teacher"s stress (stressors).They recommended their results to the college psychologist in the prevention and coping with the professional EM-2023-5664 stress.Reddy and Poornima conducted a study to investigate the occupational stress and the professional burnout of South Indian University teachers.The results of the study revealed that majority (74%) of the university teachers are experiencing moderate and high levels of occupational stress and 86% of teachers have professional burnout.From the above data it is revealed that 77% of the interviewees are aged below 30 years, 54% of the respondents who engaged in teaching profession are women and nearly 55% of them are married, 63% of them are from nuclear family, 48% of the pollees have qualification of PG degree and 62 % of them belongs to Arts department, 65% of the respondents have experience below 5 years and 30% of the respondents have income below Rs 15000 per month.From the above data it is revealed that 53% of the respondents felt that they have very high workload, 53% of the teachers are often assigned with additional responsibilities, 57% of the pollees are often assigned with difficult tasks, 49% of the respondents are highly agreed that they are able to achieve their daily job demands, 33% of the teachers agreed and 33% of them felt neutral towards forgetting things during work, 39% of the teachers agreed that they are facing insufficient time to meet deadlines, 43% of them agreed that they have adaptability in the assigned work, around 59% of the respondents agreed that they are satisfied with their work.

Highly disagree 07
From the above table it is revealed that 39% of the respondents agreed that they felt like having tension, irritation and annoyance at work, 48% of the respondents agreed that they felt like having boredom, depression and lose of interest while doing work, 42% of the respondents agreed that they felt like having apprehensiveness about taking new responsibility.From the above table it is revealed that 69% of the respondents have the ability to manage personal commitments, 71% of the respondents have the availability of time to concentrate on career and higher studies, 47% of the respondents agreed that they have uncertainty about their career, 41% of the teachers agreed that they have enough time to spent in concern of personal care, 43% of the respondents agreed that they have adaptability in their job.Highly disagree 10 07 From the above table it is revealed that 33% of the teachers agreed that they have stress due to incompletion of work, 34% of the respondents agreed that they have stress because of being idle, 45% of the respondents agreed that they have stress due to fear towards boss, 33% of the teachers agreed that they have stress because of causing mistakes at work.Highly disagree 05 03 From the above table it is revealed that 43% of the respondents are highly agreed that they have stress because of assertion to grievance caused by students, 43% of the respondents felt neutral towards stress due to poor students behavior and their negative attitude towards study, 35% of the respondents agreed that they have stress in training proper behavior aspects among students, 41% of the respondents agreed that they have stress in paying equal attention to each students, 35% of the respondents agreed that they have stress in working with unmotivated students.From the above table it is revealed that 62% of the respondents agreed that they have back pain, 35% of the respondents agreed that they have sleep related problems, 50% of the respondents felt neutral towards having eye problems, 41% of the respondents felt neutral towards having fatigue, 51% of the respondents felt neutral towards having headache, 45% of the respondents felt neutral towards having muscle aches, 57% of the respondents felt neutral towards having frustration, 47% of the respondents felt neutral towards having depression, 48% of the respondents felt neutral towards having nail biting habit, 43% of the respondents felt neutral towards having emotional imbalances, 53% of the respondents felt neutral towards having anxiety.Form the above table it is revealed that 55% of the respondents highly agreed that yoga and exercise helps in reducing stress, 37% of the respondents highly agreed that playing with children helps in reducing stress, 51% of the respondents agreed that interaction with positive colleagues helps in reducing stress, 41% of the respondents agreed that reading motivational books helps in reducing stress, 51% of the respondents agreed that having rest helps in reducing stress, 43% of the respondents agreed that having positive attitude helps in reducing stress, 85% of the respondents believe that taking everything at ease helps in reducing stress.

Suggestions
Faculties can acquire good health through proper workout, healthy meals and sound sleep.To reduce stress and excel in teaching profession, college they have to consider a lot of factors and to follow up on them.Stress can be avoid by having faith in the abilities of the students so that they can test the own performance to make them satisfied and it will be appreciated to get a good start by seeking help from others.Try to keep a positive journal and find something positive about each day to note down in journal, which is a useful self-care exercise and is a positive reminder that however hard life gets, there is always joy to be found.Try to equate the activities that are related to the research project, teaching profession and domestic life.It might seem simple, but both exercise and sleep are a brilliant way to take care.Yoga, swimming, pilates or simply walking, eight hours of sleep is really important for feeling fresh and ready for the next day.

Conclusion
Stress issues has become contemporary, being an occupational hazard in educational professions, needs to be addressed without delay.Stress can make an individual productive and constructive when it is identified and well managed.In times of great stress or adversity, it"s always best to keep busy, to plow anger and energy into something positive.Positive attitude and meditation helps in managing the stress impacts.
Having broader perspective of life will definitely change the perception of stress.
Teaching is a different profession where the peace of mind is must.Therefore, a good strategy to provide a pleasant academic environment is required.Actions to reduce job stress should be given top priority in order to prove good management and good organization.It is essential that a mutual understanding between academic staff and management should be created and developed.

Table 9 : Gender And Management Of Personal Commitment
observed from the above table that the calculate value is greater than table value.So null hypothesis is rejected and alternative hypothesis is selected.So there is significant relationship between gender and management of personal commitment.

Table 10 : Age And Anger Managementcross Tabulation
It could be observed from the above table that calculated value is smaller than the table value.So null hypothesis is accepted and alternative hypothesis is rejected.So there is significant relationship between age