Judy Wanjiku Wamae

Stress has been analyzed as a major contributor to employee absenteeism and turnover limiting the potential success of an organization. It has been attributed to have negative impacts on employee emotionally, behavioral and physically. Studies that have been conducted in the work place have emphatically proven that extreme stress is detrimental to employee mental and physical well-being. The study aimed to establish the effects of occupational stress on employee job performance, among staff at the State Department for University Education and Research. Descriptive research design was adopted for the study. The target population was all employees who are one hundred and sixty four in total (164) categorized in three ranks top management, supervisory and junior staff. The model summary revealed that interpersonal relationships at work, work stress, changing nature of work explained 63.0% of the variations in employee job performance as shown by R2 value which signifies that that other factors are excluded in this model that account for 37.0% of changes in employee job performance. Study concluded that changing nature of work positively affects employee job performance and recommends that work be broken into manageable units and shared among employees. Employees should be encouraged to go on leave, share any challenges for appropriate guidance and counseling from professionals. Periodic breaks of 15-30 minutes enables the workers replenish and rejuvenate. Social interaction among employees at workplace such as acquisition of effective communication skills and team building fosters good interpersonal relationship among employees to enhance job performance in the workplace.