Prepared By

Matthew Kearney
Kunal Savlani
Tomas Tang
Zo-Han Wu
Jinzhu Zhang
Big Data and Employee Stress
An Internal Solution to Job Dissatisfaction
Executive Summary
Employee turnover is often symptomatic of
poor management, inadequate systems for
measuring stress, or a combination of both.
It is commonly known that job satisfaction is
the key to the health and growth of an orga-
nization. Our organization can collapse from
bad information and the potential neglect
of our employees dissatisfaction. So how
do we efectively measure job satisfaction:
through the accurate and timely survey of
employee stress. Here at Bank of America,
we depend on highly functional employees
that are satisfed with their work, whom
ultimately provide us with a dependable and
productive workforce.
There is no early warning system for poor
performance or employee turnover, but this
paper illustrates our need for a more ac-
curate measure of employee stress so that
we may gain the advantage against these
issues. This paper will provide you with a
glimpse of the remunerating benefts of our
proposed program. It does not only pro-
vide a real-time snapshot of the sate of the
organizations behavior, but also implements
preventative measures to aid in curing the
symptoms of poor job satisfaction. By the
end of this paper, this program will address
the needs of the most important mechanism
at Bank of Americaits employees.
Page 2 Big Data and Employee Stress
Employee turnover is
often symptomatic of
poor management,
inadequate systems for
measuring stress, or a
combination of both.
Need to Measure Employee Stress
Stress is defned as a feeling of emotional strain, pressure, discomfort, uneasiness, or
tension (Barone, Katell, Caddy & Roselione, 1984). In such a fast-paced, and detail-con-
centrated work environment as the banking industry, we can agree that it is highly possible
for employees to accumulate unhealthy levels of stress. Even though the levels of stress
might difer depending on the characteristics and the way each person interacts with the
environment, it is still important to understand the potential impact on the company from
the amount of stress that employees receive. Prices research (2003) observed the rela-
tionship between stress and job satisfaction, as well as the way it can lead to turnover
in an organization. In the
questionnaires distributed
to 296 sales associates at
several retailers, the assess-
ment variables included role
ambiguity, role overload, and
role confict for testing the
work stress. Job satisfaction
was assessed in the second
section of the questionnaire
by asking about job alterna-
tives, thoughts of quitting,
and the intention to leave
(Price, 2003). The results of
the study showed that even
though the relationship be-
tween stress and job sat-
isfaction could not be sup-
ported, possibly due to the
features of the retail industry, the level of stress is highly correlated with employee turn-
over. As a result, the need to measure and cut the stress level of employees is signifcant.
The need to evaluate employee stress falls on the burden of Bank of America, since the
majority of stress can be traced back to the work environment, as shown in graph 1-1.
Page 3 Big Data and Employee Stress
Figure 1-1
Challenges in Measuring Employee Stress
Changes in lifestyle promote high-negative stress afects. Everyone responds diferently to
stress, so the impacts are often subjective and unpredictable. A good way to combat this
stress is to accurately measure it.
POLYGRAPH
Stress is traditionally measured with a polygraph test, which monitors
physiological phenomena. We live in the real world however, and poly-
graph testing is expensive, unrealistic, and inherently stress inducing.
SPECIMENS
Blood and urine samples can also be used to assess hormone
levels associated with stress. Samples need to be analysed by a
chemist using special procedures and equipment. These methods
are also stress inducing, time consuming, and expensive.
SELF-ASSESSMENT
Self-assessment tests base scores on relevant life events. The
most widely used scale for measuring these life events has al-
ways been the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS), which
was developed by Thomas Holmes and Richard Rahe in 1967.
Holmes and Rahe performed clinical evaluations on patients
life events, and measured the correlation between these events
and the patients adjustments to these life events.
The patients were asked to give the average degree of readjustment. Each life event is at-
tributed a score, and the sum of all relevant life events is used to determine a stress score.
Self-assessments are often problematic and riddled with fallacies such as:
Items on the SRRS are often ambiguous.
Questions can be interpreted diferently by employees based on their backgrounds.
Major life events (i.e. marriage, divorce, or fnancial crisisj are often rare.
Desirable and undesirable events are often not distinguishable
Stress Inducing
Expensive
Unrealistic
Polygraph
Stress Inducing
Time Consuming
Expensive
Specimens
Ambiguous items
Inconsistent item values
Rare life events
Non distinguishing
features amongst
individuals
Self
Assesment
Page 4 Big Data and Employee Stress
The Solution - STRESSI
We have adopted a methodology that we believe will address the in-
herent weaknesses in the current methods of stress evaluation. Since
the issues associated with each of the traditional methods have been
identifed and confronted, we have come up with a unique and efec-
tive solution.
We intend to develop an in-house software program to tackle the
incredibly large task of measuring employee stress. Our design
is known as Stressi. To put it simply, Stressi is a program that is
launched when an employee logs of of their respective computer at
the end of the day, or when their day starts for the employees working evenings.
Stressi delivers a pop-up window with an interrogative phrase which allows the employee
to input a response, as shown in fgure 1-2 (Page 7j. The system will shut down normally
after Stressi accepts the response. After that, Stressi will use the employees response to
calculate a daily stress level. Stressi's algorithm will frst pick the keywords from the em-
ployees response that correlate with emotionally positive, nega-
tive, or neutral feelings.
Then, Stressi will assign a score to each of the words selected by
the algorithm. Depending on the severity of the emotion associ-
ated with the word, a rating will be assigned on a scale from 0
to 10. After that, Stressi calculates the employees overall stress
score, which then can be used to measure the companys overall
employee stress.
Since these scores are associated with employee's specifc identi-
ties, the data can also be sorted by any attribute imaginable that is
associated with Bank of America employees. For example, you will
have the ability to look at stress comparisons by salary, department,
age, or marital status. This assessment of big data will provide a
continuous source of real-time stress monitoring, so that
actions can be taken to prevent job turnover.
How was your
day today?
Is everything
alright?
How was your
day today?
Page 5 Big Data and Employee Stress
Benets to the Organ|zat|on
Benets to Emp|oyees
Working in a stressful environment has signifcant infuences on an employee's ftness and
well-being. Froehlich (2013) suggested in her research that employees should have the
energy and well-being to capably absorb any changes within an organization.
Changes are often associated with negative stress afects. The negative impacts observed
include emotional exhaustion, anxiety, and depression. These health problems can be
linked back to stressful work environments (Lovelace, 2002).
We measure stress to reduce the level of job-induced stressors. This not only keeps the
organizations retention rate high but also prevents employees from physiological and psy-
chological damages.
Benets to Management
Upper Management will have access to the stress reports generated by the software,
which is crucial in making adjustments to the workplace environment. Our leadership can
plan and implement stress-management programs, which can include activities such as
yoga, exercises, and company team-building events (U.S. Mine Safety, 1999).
The reduced stress will decrease absenteeism, and ultimately reduce the rate of turnover.
The intelligence gathered by Stressi will help management to promote job engagement
and job satisfaction for the workforce by augmenting workplace environmental factors. Of-
fce hours, lunch break, holidays and incentives are among the many variables that can be
adjusted to manipulate employee stress (U.S. Mine Safety, 1999).
Page 6 Big Data and Employee Stress
Big data will provide a continuous
source of real-time stress monitoring
so that actions can be taken to prevent
job turnover.
Conclusion
In this fast-paced banking environment, it is important to have the critical knowledge of
employee stress levels. Employee stress levels provide a sample of the companys work
environment. Stressi is the best solution for measuring and gathering this data across a
large gamut of operating systems.
The reports Stressi generates are invaluable, and will keep
Bank of America ahead of the industry in regards to
employee turnover. Stressis revolutionary design for big data
on a daily basis has an ostensible advantage for evaluative
psychology in the workplace. Management is key to the suc-
cess of our company, and Stressi is key to our management
making informed decisions on the policies and procedures
governing Bank of America.
Software
Features
A time constraint will
allow an expedient
response from the
employee
Big data solution
The software requires
little maintenance
The user cannot close
the window until 5
characters are entered
and submitted
Reports are generated
and submitted to
management daily
The software is fully
functional on all operating
systems
The generated reports
are available 24/7, 365
days a year
Tell us about your day
Page 7 Big Data and Employee Stress
Figure 1-2
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