Assessing the Effects of COVID-19 on Workplace Mental Stress in Pakistan

Abstract

All over the globe, including in Pakistan, COVID-19 has had a negative impact on people. Out of everything, the pandemic affects health, finances, social life and also creates a lot of mental anxiety. Feeling stressed in the mind means you are emotionally and physically tensed which can occur when someone gets bothered, frustrated, upset or nervous due to a certain event or idea. The aim of our study is to check and measure how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the mental stress of employees in private organizations at Karachi. The concept of the study is “The Transactional Model of Stress and Coping Theory”.  The theory points out that people rely on appraisal to figure out harm, danger or challenges which sets off their actions to deal with those situations. For this study, we obtained information from the employees of 05 x Major pharmaceutical organizations (GSK, GETZ, ABBOTT, SEARLE, & SAMI Pharma) in Karachi by giving them a survey form that was posted online. I picked 21 statements or questions related to COVID-19 to see how the pandemic has influenced the employees’ mental stress. The formation of the scales was planned so that future groups can easily use them when studying pandemics. The results pointed out that 75.57% of workers in private organizations aged 18 to 50+ years in Karachi, Pakistan are under greater stress because of the COVID-19 situation. The pressure continues since we have not put a stop to the pandemic. The results of this research could contribute to additional research/evaluation on COVID-19 and its effects on mental stress and finding appropriate ways to help people in Pakistan deal with mental stress.