At 3am, Rajkot is asleep. The streets are dark, the city still. But Shruti Singh is wide awake. Not jolted by a nightmare, not stirred by noise. Just trapped in the relentless churn of logistics disputes, client grievances and accounts work that crept into her role uninvited, and never left. Her alarm will not ring for another three hours, but it hardly matters. Her workday has already begun — inside her head. Shruti is not an outlier. She is the norm. Across Gujarat’s IT corridors — Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat and Rajkot — thousands of technology professionals are locked in a version of the same struggle: chronic, compounding workplace stress that has moved well beyond the occasional bad week. What looks from the outside like individual burnout, researchers now say, is a systemic issue with serious economic consequences. The study These findings emerge from a detailed academic study titled, “The Impact of Work Stress on Employee Productivity in IT Companies in Selected Cities of Gujarat”, conducted by research scholar Dr Archana Mishra under the guidance of Dr Sandipkumar G Prajapati at the Department of Commerce and Business Management, Maharaja Sayajirao University (MSU) of Baroda. The study draws on responses from 1,400 IT professionals across the four cities, combining statistical analysis with firsthand accounts to examine how stress, deepened by the pandemic and the shift to remote work, is quietly hollowing out productivity from within. Stress as default setting The numbers are striking: 42.6% of IT employees surveyed said they feel stressed “always” due to work demands. Another 34.5% said they feel stressed “sometimes”. Fewer than one in four (22.9%) reported never feeling stressed at work. The pattern holds across all four cities, suggesting this is not about a few toxic workplaces but about something built into the sector itself. Employees pointed to tight deadlines, long hours, overtime, frequent meetings, vague role definitions and the pressure of juggling multiple projects at once. For Shruti, that vagueness became physical. Handling responsibilities that had nothing to do with her job description left her with chronic cervical pain and recurring migraines. When she raised the issue, she was told it was “part of the growth process”. The study confirms what her experience implies: stress routinely spills over into health. Sleep disturbances, anxiety and recurring medical complaints were widely reported, particularly in Ahmedabad and Surat, where health-related stressors ranked among the most severe. What the pandemic broke If stress was already a feature of IT work before 2020, the pandemic turned it into the architecture. The initial shift to working from home (WFH) was framed as flexibility, but the data tells a different story. More than 57% of respondents said WFH increased their stress levels. Boundaries dissolved. Working hours stretched. The expectation of constant digital availability became the norm. And even after offices reopened, the strain stuck. In all, 38.6% of those surveyed continue to work from home. Another 33.9% follow a hybrid model. Only 27.5% are back in the office full-time. Meanwhile, 40.7% work night shifts, disrupting sleep cycles, family routines and social lives in ways that compound over time. Maulik Bhansali, CEO of Netweb Software, says the real challenge is no longer whether hybrid work exists, but whether anyone is managing it well. “After Covid, the entire working culture changed,” he says. “When people work in isolation for long periods, the informal things that connect a team, such as conversations, peer learning, the energy of being in a room together, all weaken. That directly affects engagement and productivity.” The fix, Bhansali says, is in giving clarity and structure to the hybrid model of work. “Leaders must help employees define active and non-active hours. Without that, work keeps bleeding into personal time. Productivity today is not about long hours. It is about problem-solving capability, learning from peers and future readiness.” Output under pressure The study’s central finding is blunt: 56.4% of IT employees said work stress has a direct negative impact on their productivity. The damage is not evenly distributed. In Vadodara, 67.1% reported a negative impact — the highest among the four cities. Rajkot followed at 58%, Ahmedabad at 51.4% and Surat at 51.2%. The effects show up in predictable ways: reduced focus, declining quality, missed deadlines, rising absenteeism. In Vadodara, Vanshika Motwani learned the hard way what happens when stress meets hierarchy. After flagging a timeline error in a project overseen by a senior director, she was formally warned for “insubordination”. The weeks that followed brought fear, sick leave and a collapse in confidence — a spiral the data confirms is far from rare. The productivity paradox Here is the strange thing: despite all this, many employees still see themselves as productive. The survey found that 18.6% rated themselves “very productive”, another 15.6% called themselves “productive”, and 25.1% were neutral. But nearly 45% classified themselves as unproductive or very unproductive. Researchers call this a productivity paradox. People are working longer and harder, but not necessarily better. The effort is enormous. The returns are diminishing. Kshiti Joshi, an IT professional from Surat, puts it plainly. Health issues and subtle workplace bullying, she says, are constant undercurrents. “You’re always proving you deserve to be here. The effort is invisible, but the exhaustion is real.” Loyalty on the decline The stress is also corroding commitment. Only about 39% of those surveyed said they are fully committed to building a long-term career with their current employer. Nearly 35% said they are not. Job satisfaction mirrors the fracture. Around 43% expressed dissatisfaction, with the sharpest numbers in Ahmedabad and Vadodara. Financial pressures — stagnant salaries, delayed promotions, limited growth — ranked among the most potent stressors on the career front. Dr Prajapati places Gujarat’s findings within a wider national frame. “According to the 2025 Gallup State of the Global Workplace Report, 41% of employees under 35 experience daily stress at work,” he says. “At the same time, 50% of Indian employees are actively considering switching jobs, which is a sign of widespread dissatisfaction and workplace strain.” He notes that Indian IT professionals commonly clock 45 to 50 hours a week, well beyond the standard 40. This contributes directly to poor work-life balance, he says. The downstream effects are predictable: long hours erode focus, daily anxiety drives absenteeism, and stress-related health problems inflate healthcare and turnover costs. Citing Deloitte’s Mental Health and Well-being in the Workplace survey, Prajapati puts a number on the damage: poor mental health costs Indian employers an estimated Rs 1.1 lakh crore annually — Rs 51,000 crore lost to presenteeism, Rs 14,000 crore to absenteeism, and Rs 45,000 crore to attrition. “These figures show that workplace stress is not merely an HR concern,” he says. “It is a measurable drain on organisational competitiveness.” The gap in response Are companies doing anything about it? Not enough, the data suggests. Nearly a third of employees said their organizations never conduct stress-reduction programmes. And 53.7% believe their workplaces need stronger stress-management strategies. The conclusion of the MSU study is difficult to argue with. Workplace stress in Gujarat’s IT sector is no longer an individual failing or an HR footnote. It is a structural risk to productivity and talent retention. “Without role clarity, realistic workloads, supportive leadership and genuine mental health support, especially in hybrid and WFH settings, stress will continue to drain productivity quietly,” says Dr Mishra. “For a sector driving Gujarat’s digital ambitions, the real challenge may no longer be technological. It may be human.”A SECTOR UNDER STRAIN: KEY FINDINGS OF MSU STUDYMeet the workforce 50.4% Women | 49.6% Men 53.6% aged 20-40 years 76.4% have 1-10 years’ experience 41.6% Married 56.9% from nuclear families Nearly 50% are temporary/part-time/probationary employees Shift patterns 40.7% Night shift 36.5% Flexi-time 22.8% Morning shift How productive do they feel? 18.6% Very productive 15.6% Productive 25.1% Neutral 44.7% Unproductive / Very unproductive The loyalty question 38.7% Fully committed 26.5% Neutral 34.8% Not committed The mood at work 43% Dissatisfied / Highly dissatisfied 28% Satisfied / Highly satisfied 29% Neutral 53.7% say organizations must adopt stronger stress-management strategies
