Introduction Work stress is defined as the adverse physical and psychological reaction that occurs when the demands of the job do not match the worker’s needs, abilities or resources. It negatively impacts the health of workers and the company. In order to determine the prevalence of stress in a port company in Abidjan we conducted this study.

Method A cross-sectional descriptive and analytical survey was conducted from April 2015 to July 2016. In collaboration with the company’s managers, we sensitised staff on the concept of stress at work. The data were collected using three self-questionnaires (the 26-item KARASEK job content questionnaire, 12 items GOLDBERG self-assessment questionnaire for psychopathology, and the French version of the SIEGRIST questionnaire at 46 items).

Results The prevalence of stress was 54.6%. Stress came mainly from supervisors (65.7%) and was favoured by work situations such as emergency tasks (21.4%), poor organisation of work (20.4%), and Heavy workload (17.8%). More than two-thirds of stressed workers (64%) had psychological distress. Age (p=0.139), gender (p=0.57), workplace (p=0.65), professional seniority (p=0.65) and the hourly organisation of work p=0.39) had no statistically significant impact on the occurrence of stress.

Conclusion Stress is a major psychological risk requiring preventive measures such as listening cells and improved working conditions in human, technical and organisational terms.