Work stress at the head office in petrovietnam transportation corporation

Page | 4 LIST OF CHARTS Chart 1: Turnover at Head office in PVTrans Chart 2: Labors quited the job at Head Office in PVTrans Chart 3: The reasons to quit the job at Head office in PVTran

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Le Thi Le Diem

WORK STRESS AT THE HEAD OFFICE

IN PETROVIETNAM TRANSPORTATION CORPORATION

MASTER OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

SUPERVISOR: PROF NGUYEN PHONG NGUYEN

Ho Chi Minh City – Year 2017

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SUPERVISOR’S REPORT ON THE FINAL THESIS SUBMITTED

FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER of BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION

Final thesis title:

Student name:

Supervisor name:

1 General comments: Remarks on the student’s attitude:

Remarks on the assignment’s academic quality:

2 Overall assessment: Meet requirement for submitting; Not meet requirement for submitting 3 Other remarks: - Did the student follow the report schedule? Yes No Other

- The Turnitin plagiarism percentage:



Supervisor’s signature

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LIST OF FIGURES 4

LIST OF TABLES 4

1 Back ground 5

1.1 Symptoms: 7

1.2 Initial cause – effect map 9

1.2.1 Work stress: 10

1.2.2 Bad manager of work: 10

1.2.3 Low salary: 11

1.2.4 Lack of trust in organization: 11

1.3 Updated cause – effect map: 13

1.4 Potential problems of interest: 14

2 Problem justification 15

2.1 Definition of stress of work 15

2.2 Problem existence: 16

2.3 Problem importance: 18

3 Causes validation and solutions: 18

3.1 List of real cause: 18

3.2 Set of solution: 26

4 Conclusion 33

5 Summary of methodology conducted 34

6 References 34

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LIST OF CHARTS

Chart 1: Turnover at Head office in PVTrans

Chart 2: Labors quited the job at Head Office in PVTrans

Chart 3: The reasons to quit the job at Head office in PVTrans

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Initial cause-effect map

Figure 2: Update cause – effect map

Figure 3: Work stress

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1.1: Number of labors in PVTrans Corp

Table 1.2: Number of labors at Head office in PVTrans

Table 1.3: The reasons to quit the job at Head office in PVTrans

Table 2: Initial interview results – Causes of high turnover rate

Table 3: Interviewer results

Table 4: Initial interview results – Causes of work stress

Table 5: Summary about factors affect to work stress

Table 6: Plan design

Table 7: Schedule for building compentency framwork

Table 8: Schedule for conduct assessment

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1 Back ground

 Introduction about company:

- Company name: PETROVIETNAM TRANSPORTATION CORPORATION

 Owning, operating and chartering of FPSO/FSO;

 Offshore petroleum technical services including marine survey, fabrication, installation, maintenance and repair of oil and gas facilities;

 Onshore logistics port and supply bases;

 Manpower supply of marine crew and offshore crew;

 Ship brokerage/Shipping agency and other related marine services;

 Road and inland waterway transportation including gas taxis, LPG trucks and busses;

Page | 6 Organization chart of PVTrans:

(Source: Website of PVTrans: http://pvtrans.com)

Source: HR Department of PVTrans

Chart 2: Labors quited the job at Head Office in PVTrans

Table 1.3: The reasons to quit the job at Head office in PVTrans

Source: HR Department of PVTrans

No Reasons to quit the job labors %

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1.1 Symptoms:

Purpose is find the reason lead to high labor turnover at the head office in PVTrans which more and more increases, we have conducted the study and statistical analysis of the actual staffing situation at the company such as:

Table 1.1: Number of labors in PVTrans Corp

Source: HR Department of PVTrans

Chart 1: Turnover at Head office in PVTrans

The number of employees quited from Human resource departmen of Head office in PVTrans from the Board of Directors of the Corporation from 2014 to 2017 is as follows:

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1.2 Initial cause – effect map

In order to find out the cause of the high labor turnover, I conducted direct interviews with

05 staff working in the head office in PVTrans and explore factors effecting high labor turnover The summary of the interview results is shown on Table 1:

Table 2: Initial interview results – Causes of high turnover rate Title job of interviewee Reason of high turnover Explain

Planning & Investing

- Bad manager

1 Lack of trust in organization :

- Having a lot of gossip

- Not handing problem in a timely

2 Bad manager:

- No employee empowerment

- No motivation for employee

Deputy C&B manager - Work stress

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Accountant staff - Work stress 1 Work stress: Undervalued

Recruiting & Training staff

- Bad manager

- Lack of trust in organization

1 Lack of trust in organization :

- Having a lot of gossip

- Job doesn’t match description

2 Bad manager:

- No motivation for employee

In order to better understand the reasons and the root cause of the problems, I further continued the in-depth interviews and provided more specific and clear explanations and synthesized as follows

There are four factors affects to high turnover that are work stress, bad manager of work, low salary and lack of trust in organization They was explained such as:

No growth opportunities: Most of employee desires the opportunity to develop a career so when no growth opportunity not their expectation and that is why they give up the company For PVTrans young & inexperienced staff is very difficult to have development opportunities – Deputy C&B manager said

Undervalued: When employees try to work without recognized manager they will quickly because they think it is unfair The cause of this is due to the company's assessment system is incorrect performance appraisal - Planning & investing manager, Deputy C&B manager and Accountant staff said

1.2.2 Bad manager of work: There are two factors affect such as

No employee empowerment: Manager does not give employee empowerment to do, causing difficulties and obstacles to employees during the work process leading to depressed and dismissed employees The cause of this is the manager has poor manager people skill – Deputy insurance manager, deputy C&B manager said

No motivation for employee: Managers always give their employees stressors that do not motivate employees make them give up their work The cause of this is the manager has poor manager people skill - Deputy insurance manager, deputy C&B manager, Recruiting& Training staff said

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1.2.3 Low salary:

Low increase salary: Salary is an important issue for every employee, if their salary is not raised or raised very slowly is one of the reasons they leave to find another company with higher salary Low increases salary is caused by: no budget increase to salary, Unrecognized manager,

HR department does not conduct – Planning & Investing manager said

No competitive salary: Low salary is due to not competing with the market The company does not compete with the market in addition it is also very difficult to recruit good staff The cause of this is due to no research salary in the market or the policy of the company – Planning & Investing manager said

1.2.4 Lack of trust in organization:

When employees do not trust in the organization, they easily give up the organization The reasons for their lack of trust in the organization:

Having a lot of gossip: Affect staff such as they do not know the exact information that the reason they easily fall into a depressed state There are a lot of gossips because of no clear information in the company – Deputy insurance manager, Recruiting & Training staff said Not handing problem in a timely: Some of the problems that arise in organizations that have not been solved yet, make employees feel depressed and lose trust in the organization – Deputy insurance manager said

Job doesn’t match description: When the job is not as promised, an employee becomes distrusting of the employer - Recruiting & Training staff said

From the interview, deep interview and data collected during the interview, I analyzed and presented the initial cause-effect map such as:

Page | 12 Figure 1: Initial cause-effect map

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1.3 Updated cause – effect map:

To ensure that important factors affecting high labor turnover are not overlooked, we have searched the literature and we proposed new variables that affect high turnover We re-interviewed 05 staffs and the results show that the additional variables actually involved high labor turnover So we have the updated cause-effect map as follows:

Bad manager it mean that the manager is unfair treatment, rude behavior and bad management of work

Firstly, The management of the unfair treatment is the main reason for the employee's lack

of motivation which is the root cause of the employee feeling depressed and laid off

Secondly, when the manager is bad management of work lead to they do not know how to assign work, do not know how their employees to deploy effective work specifically as they do not empowerment (employee empowerment) This hinders the performance of an employee's work, so they can not complete their work so they easily give up work

Finally, the manager has got rude behavior, often chastising employees or behaving disrespectful of the employee and violating the rules of conduct in the organization This will cause frustration for the staff during the work process as they feel very tired, stressed and mentally hurt This is one of the major influences on the psychology of workers and is the cause

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Figure 2: Update cause – effect map

1.4 Potential problems of interest:

Stress of work

According to the updated cause - effect map, there are too many causes for high

labor turnover at head office in PVTrans However, we only focus on Stress of work

leading to high labor turnover at head office in PVTrans because of that the reason:

Work stress is becoming a serious problem at Head office in PVTrans not only lead

to employee raising leave job but also leads to the decrease in work efficiency affecting the

quality of work so work stress is a problem That the reason to pay attention and solving to

reduce labor turnover and improve the work efficiency of the Company

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In during of research and fact finding, the main causes of work stress in work are focusing from the fact that the performance of appraisal system of the company is not good and no coaching and training for staff These problems are within the scope of my HR department's work department so now I have enough analysis and the ability to work out solutions within the HR Department's work area to solve the these problems

With the scope of the topic at the head office in PVTrans based on the existing data based on the actual situation of the company, this issue will be resolved in the period of 06 months to 01 years

2 Problem justification

2.1 Definition of stress of work

Mary Gormandy White Definition of Work Stress; no date [cited 2017 August 6] Available from: http://stress.lovetoknow.com/Definition_of_Work_Stress:

Work stress is defined as the stress that comes from work Employee control during work can affect the level of stress in the job All jobs are stressful and really harmful to an employee who causes emotional and physical negativity that can be very difficult to control

at work

Jennifer Lombardo Stress in the Workplace: Definition, Sources & Meaning; no date

[cited 2017 August 6].Available from:

employee to cope or give up when confronted with a difficult problem

Employee, London What is stress?; no date [cited 2017 August 6] Available from:http://www.hse.gov.uk/stress/furtheradvice/whatisstress.htm, HSE's formal definition

of work related stress is: Stress is not a disease but a condition If stress becomes excessive and prolonged, it can lead to mental illness

Government of Canada.Workplace Stress – General; no date [cited 2017 August 6] Available from: http://www.ccohs.ca/oshanswers/psychosocial/stress.html Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary defines stress as: The result is created when a structure, system or body is acted upon by forces that break the balance or create tension In simple words, stress is the result of any weak Emotional, physical, social, economic or other factors require reactive or change In general, it is believed that some stress is okay (sometimes called "challenge" or "stress" positive straight ") but when stress occurs with numbers that you can not handle, both mental and physical changes can occur

"Stress in the workplace" is a physical and mental impairment that can occur when there is

a conflict between job requirements and the level of control an employee has met In general, the combination of high demand for work and low control of the situation can lead

to stress

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Never Almost never Sometimes Fairly often Very Often

2 How would you rate the level of your work stress?

Never Almost never Sometimes Fairly often Very Often

3 How often do you felt unable to control your work at workplace?

Never Almost never Sometimes Fairly often Very Often

4 How often does your manager no support to you in work?

Never Almost never Sometimes Fairly often Very Often

5 Does your manager has too much control your work?

Never Almost never Sometimes Fairly often Very Often

6 Do you felt your job has a lot of responsibility, but you don’t have very much authority?

Never Almost never Sometimes Fairly often Very Often

7 Do you seldom receive adequate acknowledgement or appreciation when your work is really good?

Never Almost never Sometimes Fairly often Very Often

8 In general, Are you not particularly proud or satisfied with my job?

Never Almost never Sometimes Fairly often Very Often

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9 Do you have the impression that you are repeatedly picked on or discriminated against at work?

Never Almost never Sometimes Fairly often Very Often

10 Do you have frequent arguments with superiors, manager or coworkers?

Never Almost never Sometimes Fairly often Very Often

Table 3: Interviewer results

4 Very Often

This shows that the problem is really existing stress to the staff at Head Office in PVTrans at now

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2.3 Problem importance:

Today, the stress and pressure of work and life make you always in a state of anxiety that causes fatigue, depression and loss of motivation in work and life Stress causes many of the consequences of physical and mental damage that affect the individual and organization as follows:

Firstly, stress effects on people such as: physical lead to sleep disturbances, headaches, raised blood pressure and gastrointestinal; people is easily emotional, depression, labile emotions, anxiety and irritablility; Intellectual and behavioral

Secondly, stress effects on the organization such as: High labor turnover, Poor time keeping, Poor performance and productivity, Low morale, Poor motivation, Increased employee complaints, Increased ill-health and accidents and incidents reports

At Head Office in PVTrans, works stress had a lot of consequences on the health of the staff, the negative relationship and the reduction in productivity, the following issues:

Work stress effects on health: physical and mental, increased sickness absence, Fatigue, Apathy, loss of interest in work, pessimistic, irritable, or depressed In the last year, the company had several employees due to stress and too much work pressure had to quit medical treatment for a while

Additionally, Work stress from affecting employee health also affects work Staff who are in bad health will directly affect their work performance such as fatigue, unwillingness to work, lack of concentration in work or regular absences in the Company, which is one of the main causes lead tostaff often make mistakes on the job, do not complete the work assigned, labor productivity is low Work stress seriously affects the perception of employees at work, reducing the ability to analyze and evaluate employees' work processes so they will not be able to make a good decision or a good approach beacause of dealing with the main task this greatly affects the work efficiency that affects the organization

Finally, work stress affects in negative relationships in company: Many employees are irritability with your colleague or other staff are depression and non communication with any other people in the current state of the following person of this person This makes

it difficult to coordinate work between departments affecting the performance of the company

3 Causes validation and solutions:

3.1 List of real cause:

In order to find out list of real cause, I have search the literature and found potential causes

of work stress such as:

 Work relationships

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When we work, the most of jobs that need to meet many peole that you need to join the other as the level, the colleagues, managers, clients or competing, clients If you have bad or not supported from other members will cause it for these we can not to complete this job will pressure and cause to straight together for we it Besides not receiving the cooperation, support of colleagues, managers in the process of doing work makes the individual feel lonely, isolated in the organization Main causes are:

Firstly, Leadership style: Managers have aggressive management styles that often create too much pressure on employees and do not motivate, share and care about employees The manager is ignorant and always looking for the fault of the employee

Secondly, Relationship with colleagues: no support from colleagues In the company there is the situation of old people caught and harassed new people lead to relationships with colleagues extremely bad

 Work-life balance

Work - life balance is an important factor that directly affects the work, mental and physical performance of workers Factors affecting work and life balance such as working time and family time, overworked workers having no time for personal or family life outside of employment The health of the individual but also affect their family in the long run will cause stress and affect the efficiency of work

Or the unstable work of time and place also greatly impact on one's life is the cause

of stress due to unbalanced work and work

In addition, the monthly income of employees is also an important factor affecting the lives of each person and their families

 Resources and communication

Employees can only do the job effectively when they are provided with sufficient resources and sufficient information about the job stress occurs during the performance of the work due to:

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Firstly, Workers lack information about work, organization and do not receive specific requests from higher level

Then, The manager's lack of feedback, clear assessment of the results of the performance of the work of the staff is also the cause of the base of work;

Beside, Lack of training and guidance in the workplace is one of the main causes of difficulties for employees in the process of performing work

Finally, not enough resources: machines, equipment for work, not enough human resources to perform work are the reasons leading to not complete work and stress for employees

 Pays and benefits

The financial rewards associated with a job are important in terms of lifestyle They are also often perceived to be an indication of an individual's worth and value to the organization Although financial reward may not be a prime motivator, it could become a factor if there are other negative aspects of the job

In order to find out list of real cause, I conducted direct interviews with 05 staff working in the head office in PVTrans and explore factors effecting work stress

Table 4: Initial interview results – Causes of work stress Title job of interviewee Causes of work stress Explain

Planning & Investing

- Bad manager

Lack of trust in organization:

- Having a lot of gossip

- Job doesn’t match description Bad manager:

- Incorrect performance appraisal

- Rude behavior

- No motivation for employee

Deputy C&B manager

- Unfair treatment

- No employee empowerment

- No motivation for employee

- Incorrect performance appraisal Accountant staff - Undervalued employment Undervalued employment:

- Unfair treatment

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- Incorrect performance appraisal

Recruiting & Training

staff

- Bad manager

- Lack of trust in organization

Lack of trust in organization :

- Having a lot of gossip

- Job doesn’t match description Bad manager:

- No motivation for employee

In order to find out list of real cause, I conducted direct interviews with 05 staff working

in the head office in PVTrans and explore factors effecting work stress After that I have search the literature and found that is shown:

Figure 3: Work stress

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There are 04 causes lead to work stress that are over workload, undervalues employment, poor relationship with bosses, poor resource and communication

Firstly, cause of work stress is over workload

University of Cambridge Causes of work-related stress; no date [cited 2017 oct 5] Available from:http://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/offices/hr/policy/stress/causes.html: Over workload - This is the extent to which employees feel that their workload requirements and associated time pressure are a source of pressure, such as: Unrealistic expectations and expectations, often the result of super success by the most talented; unmanageable workload, under recruiting employees for their work; low technology

Wikipedi Occupational stress; no date [cited 2017 oct 18] Available from:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational_stress

In building a career, solving problems can be stressful and is considered a stressful experience for an employee There are three factors that create stress: Quantitative workload or overload; qualitative workload and underload

Jobs with high demands lead to stress and especially when individuals have low control of work The workload is also related to work needs Work stress when the need exceeds the resources of the individual to meet the job requirements

Nibusinessinfo.co.uk How to deal with stress; no date [cited 2017 oct 15] Available from: https://www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk/content/common-causes-stress-work“Excessively high workloads, with unrealistic deadlines making people feel rushed, under pressure and overwhelmed.”

Raven Ishak; 9 july 2016 [cited 2017 Nov.15] Available from:

Managers do not support you at work, they only use you to achieve their personal goals This creates a bad working environment for you in the workplace that the reason

make you meet works tress

At Head office in PVTrans, staffs are over workload from two main reason: poor working skills and no support manager

Poor working skills: staffs are poor working skills lead to not enough abilities to conduct their works Now, many staffs at Head office in PVTrans are lack of working skills such as: – Deputy insurance manager, Recruiting & Training staff said

Secondly, Undervalues employment is the reason make work stress:

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Laura Slingon; 11th September 2017 [cited 2017 Nov 10] Available from:11th

The reason for top work stress makes you want to quit your job because you have not been evaluated Being undervalued at work, not recorded in the work, whether you get a good earn you also depressed and do not want to continue work

Raven Ishak; 9 july 2016 [cited 2017 Nov.15] Available from:

You will have a lot of trouble working with a manager who does not want you to grow and instead they always control your career path by preventing you from getting opportunities for growth in the workplace Most people want to work with a manager who sees the talent and ability of the employee to develop, thereby creating opportunities for employees to grow Persons who are jealous of you and impede your chances of development and seek to undermine you give you a bad working environment, without ethical standards, this will give you work stress that you want quit job

Result obtained from interviews with employees are problematic and impact on staff is undervalues because they have been devoted and worked well but manager unrecognized prices create frustration and inhibition for employees This in the long run makes employees feel depressed without any motivation

In addition, the manager does not give employees the opportunity to develop shared and oriented work of the future employees Specifically, the Company's staff is seldom promoted who promoted are mainly from recruiting staff from outside or transferring from member units due to management's underestimation of employees' Opportunity to train and develop your staff This is one of the reasons employees lose direction, lose confidence and motivation in their work so they will be depressed, stressed and work with little or no effect

non-Thirdly, poor relationship with bosses affect:

George N Root III Boss & Employee Relationships; no date [cited 2017 oct 18] Available from:http://smallbusiness.chron.com/boss-employee-relationships-11913.html:

“The boss and employee relationship is important to company productivity A relationship that is built on trust and understanding can make the employee and manager more efficient A poor relationship that lacks cohesiveness will dampen productivity and can lead to high rates of employee turnover There are several elements that make up a boss and employee relationship that need to be understood by both parties for the relationship to be effective.”

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Wikipedia Workplace relationships; no date [cited 2017 oct.18] Available from:

“Workplace relationships are unique interpersonal relationships with important implications for the individuals in those relationships, and the organizations in which the relationships exist and develop

Studies show that workplace relationships directly affect a worker's ability to succeed Because workers are spending on average 50 hours a week in the workplace, these long work hours are resulting in the formation of workplace friendships These connections can be both positive, and have the potential to become harmful.”

Based on the above literature, I conducted interviews with employees in the company

I collect data from interviewing result to find 03 factors lead to poor relationship with bosses: unfair treatment, no employee empowerment and motivation for employee

The most problem in PVTrans now is the unfair treatment of leaders to employees, such as unreasonable job assignments, does not record ang evaluate performance results of employee.Additionally,manager does not support staff during the work process

Unreasonable job assignment reflected in the assignment does not promote the expertise, capacity and strength of employees This in turn makes employees feel dissatisfied with the leader, leading to a deteriorating relationship between management and employees that is leading to stress in the workplace

Leadership does not share the difficulties of the job nor share with the staff about the issues that need to be dealt with in the process of doing work Relationships in work between staff and manager become difficult

Managers often blame the employee and do not record and evaluate the results even when the employee performs well This is what makes employees feel they are not treated fairly leading them always stress at work

Finally, poor resources and communication:University of Cambridge Cause of work related stress; no date [cited 2017 oct 15] Available from:

In order to perform well, effectively, workers must see that they have been trained, equipped with machinery and equipment in full and in accordance with the requirements of the job They also feel they are well informed, well informed and highly regarded Work stress is created by: lack of information about what is happening in the organization affecting the work; Lack of feedback on how performance can be achieved; Not fully trained in the knowledge and skills to perform the job; Lack of equipment, machinery and resources to do the job