Sources of stress: Workplace stress

Question 1

What model has been used to show the issues of workload and control?

Answer 1

The job strain model of stress.

Question 2

What does the job strain model of stress propose?

Answer 2

Proposes that the workplace causes stress and illness in two ways:
- High workload which creates higher job demands
- Low job control which puts pressure on deadlines and procedures.

Question 3

What was Marmot et al 1997 procedure?

Answer 3

• Followed over 10,000 UK civil servants who worked in Whitehall, London.
• Some participants who work in higher grade/more professional jobs have high levels of workload and control but those in lower grade jobs have less work load and control (meaning they both experience stress but for different reasons).
• At the beginning of a study participants completed a range of questionnare’s assessing their job workload, subjective sense of control and the support system they had.
• 11 years later the coronary heart disease of patients was assessed as a measure of stress.

Question 4

What are some issues with Marmot’s study?

Answer 4

Sample size: 10,000 used was rather large
Culture bias: All UK based
Generalisability: Can’t be generalised to everyone as these civil servants may have different roles.

Question 5

What is an issue with the methodology?

Answer 5

The participants were using self report scales which could have lead to socially desirable responses or the participants may not understand the terminology.

Question 6

How can we improve the methodology?

Answer 6

May be able to improve the study through interviews but we wouldn’t be able to sample everyone so we could choose participants through random sampling.

Question 7

What were the findings of the Marmot et al study?

Answer 7

They found that those with the higher grade jobs tended to have the highest workload and thus the highest sense of job control.

They found that CHD was not associated with high workload but low job control was meaning those in lower grade jobs would have been experiencing health issues.

The combined effect of low job control/high workload was the strongest among younger workers and wasn’t reduced by high levels of social support.

Question 8

What was the procedure of the Swedish Sawmill (Johansson et al 1978)?

Answer 8

• Studied 28 manual labourers in a Sawmill.
• The high risk group (high workload/low control) were 14 sawyers, edgers & graders who were compared to a low risk group of stickers, repair men and maintenance workers that were matched in term of factors like education and job experience.
• They measured levels of andrenaline daily and obtained self reports of job satisfaction and illness.

Question 9

What was the findings of the Swedish Sawmill (Johansson et al 1978)?

Answer 9

The high risk group has higher illness rates and higher levels of adrenaline in their urine than the low risk groups.

The self reports data helped to confirm that the high risk group had a greater workload and lowered sense of control - their jobs were repetitive and constrained as tasks were pre-planned and there was little individual design of work routines and self control of the work place.

The high risk group also reported a higher sense of social isolation.

Question 10

Why is stress and illness an important issue in the workplace?

Answer 10

It causes an economic strain.

Question 11

What did a report in the Huffington post by Shearer, 2013 claim?

Answer 11

Claimed the cost in the UK reached £6.5 billion in 2012 due to 10.4 million days were lost due to staff absenteeism related and if you compare this to the £22.5 billion spent for health and social issues. It is hard to measure the cost of the time lost but it overall adds to the total bill.

Question 12

What else did Shearer also say?

Answer 12

That presenteeism is on the rise and employees are coming to work disengaged, tired, unmotivated and too stressed to work.

Question 13

What could too little or unchallenging work lead to?

Answer 13

May lead to a rust out which is similar to burn out as people enjoy a moderate challenge.

Question 14

What have postive psychologists found?

Answer 14

Have found that work satisfaction was a key element to hapiness and Csikszentmihalyi and LeFevre (1989) found that people enjoy a sense of flow (being in the zone) and do three times as much work than leisure.

Question 15

What did Kivimaki et al (2000) look at?

Answer 15

Looked at the stress in 800 Finnish workers from a wide range of occupations.

Question 16

What did Kivimaki et al (2000) find?

Answer 16

They found that stress had a greater toll in those with a high workload and low control and those that had this job strain were 22 times more likely to die from CHD than those with low workload and high control.

They found that workload and job control were considered individually there was no effect and it suggested that workload and job control may not have always been stressful and it’s the combination of the two that have more relevance.

They found that if the influence of job control disappeared if occupational groups were taken into account and this means that other factors relayed to the occupational groups would have been significant rather than just the issue of control.