Evaluation and Comparison of Job Stress Level among Security Workers with Fixed and Shift Work Schedules in Municipality of Tehran

Background: Considering the important role of rest and absence of tension in working environment and consequently promotion of working efficiency, finding ways with the best choices to reduce job stress, seems necessary. Municipality of Tehran with a huge number of employees and with the aim to reduce stress and promote work efficiency is studying this matter seriously. The aim of the present study was to evaluate and compare the level of job stress among fixed and shift workers of regional municipalities 18 and 20 of Tehran city. Methods: Data population of this research included building security officers of Tehran municipality. From 22 municipality regions of Tehran, two groups (88 persons from region 18 and 72 persons from region 20) were chosen randomly for exam from full time shift ( 24 hrs work, 24 hrs rest ), day-shift and night-shift workers. Osipow’s job stress test was used to determine demographic variables. The differences of job stress and mini-factors of workload role, insufficiency role, ambiguity role, limitation of role, responsibility and physical environment of security officers considering their age groups, educational level, marital status, job background, shift work and region of duty were assessed. Data were analyzed by SPSS software and processed by a professional test, MANOVA. Results: Relation between age variable and scores obtained in Ospiow’s test in regard to workload role and insufficiency role in examiners was significant with confidence 95% (p<0.05); however significant difference was not seen with other mini-factors. Also there was no statistically difference between level of job stress and other mini-factors, considering educational grade, marital status and job background of examiners. Relation between scores in job stress and mini-factors of insufficiency role, and ambiguity role while considering work shifts in confidence 95% were statistically significant (p<0.05), however significant difference was not seen with other mini-factors. At the end, relation between scores in mini-factors of role limitation and responsibility while considering job regions in confidence 95% were statistically significant (p<0.05); however significant difference was not seen with other mini-factors and the same variable. Conclusion: This survey determined that stress decreased with increasing age. Also work shift had important role in the amount of stress. Therefore, the lowest level of stress was among night-shift workers and the highest stress level was among day-shift workers and 24-24 group was in between. Also, the municipality region of workers was related with job stress. It seems that level of stress, at least in two mini-factors, in region 18 was less than region 20.