Occupational Health And Safety For Hypothetical Structure

Summary of the second article

Discuss about the Occupational Health and Safety for Hypothetical Structure.

MacDonald in his journal article, “The impact of job demands and workload on stress and fatigue”, referred to the hypothetical structure of workload. It is such a concept that has its wide application in the human factor or rather in the HF psychology. The concept of workload is often equated with the concept of job demand. Scholars and critics have often equated occupational health and safety related issues with job demand, as it is not only related to workload but at the same time, it is related to stress management at the same time.

Summary of the first article:

In the article ‘Workload, control, and social support effects on serum lipids: A longitudinal study among apparently healthy employed adults’, published by Shirom et al. (2009), the author has pointed out the effectiveness of high density lipoprotein cholesterol and the low density lipoprotein cholesterol for both the male and female employees. In order to survive in an organization, employees need to keep their health safe.  As per the JUC-S model, the employees need to have some important physiological mechanism in order to provide an effective service at the workplace. In order to provide good service within the organization, employees should be concerned about their health.

The second article, ‘The impact of job demands and workload on stress and fatigue’, published by MacDonald (2003), the author has stated that the overarching term workload is a hypothetical concept dealing with the human factors psychology. The two underlying term job demand and workload are inseparably related to each other. The author in this article has pointed out that human factor psychology can be demonstrated as one of the most effective determinants of fatigue levels of employees. If the workload inside an organization cannot be reduced, the employees would never show their interest to perform well. Therefore, the sufficient demand for the job would be created only when the employees would enjoy the rhythm of work at the workplace.  

The article ‘Mediator and Moderator effects of demands on self-control in the relationship between workload and indicators of job strain’ by Diestel and Schmidt (2009), mentioned that high work pressure is the only reason of excessive job strain. The author has highlighted that job strains hamper the entire rhythm of business. Organizational environment is one of the most effective reasons for rendering job strains on the mind of the employees. The managers with the help of autocratic leadership style like to impose their decision on the employees. As a result, employees feel uncomfortable to become accustomed with the managers following action regulation theory at the workplace.

Summary of an article of university electronic library

‘Occupational stress and hypertension’ published by Rosenthal and Alter (2012) has focused to highlight on the negative impacts occupational stress and hypertension inside the organization. Employees would never be able to perform well taking extreme pressure and tension at the time of executing services. The managers have to form their strategies and policies in such a way that employees do not hesitate to share any kind of problem regarding the job profile.

Summary of fifth article:

The article, ‘Preventing occupational stress in healthcare workers’ by Ruotsalainen, Verbeek, Mariné and Serra (2015) is reflecting that occupational stress has become much prominent in health care context. The prevention of occupational stress underlies in the complete checking of the progress report, which is documented by reviewing different segments.

In the journal, “Workload, control, and social support effects on serum lipids: A longitudinal study among apparently healthy employed adults”, conducted has proved that serum lipid are not only affected by the workloads and job demands. The research bring forward several other factors like heredity, genetic problems and even problems like smoking that could affect the serum lipids that are there in the human body. The research further proves that the work-based support that is being received by a specific individual does not affect the serum lipid level, although at times the home based support could affect the serum lipid level.

(Figure 1: The Perceived Workload within the T1 Time

(Source: Ruotsalainen et al. 2015)

The particular research although has been conducted with the help of the Job-Demand Control (-Support) or with the help of the JDC-S model, which proved that the workload or the job demand does affect the serum level. There is although, another model that has been used by various researchers to conduct the research based on the relationship between workload and the affect it has on the physiological and the psychological health of the human beings.

The second model that is being used by other researchers to conduct the research is the JD-R or the Job Demand-Resource model.  The researchers who have used this particular research model has given importance to two kinds of tradition; between these two kinds of tradition one is the motivational research and the other is the stress research tradition (Velnampy and Aravinthan 2013). According to this particular, model the job demands that are there in the organization leads to problems like health impairment. It can be said that this research proved that the job demands lead to health impairment and on the other hand, there are things like job resources act as a motivator for the individual.

Summary of fourth article

(Figure 2: The Job Demand-Resource Model

(Source: Liu et al. 2012)

The definition of stress s subjective nature, and although the phenomenon is quite new, it is present everywhere and especially in the work places. In simple words stress could be define as a response towards a demand. According to many critics and authors, the concept of stress is very natural and normal part of a life and thus it has its occurrence whenever there is any kind of major changes.

Globalization, too, is responsible for the occupational stress that is being experienced by the workers of a particular organization (Yong et al. 2013). The reason behind this is that the demand level is increasing at both the global as well as the local level. Therefore, many times the workers could not cope up with this demand and thus it gives rise to problems like work related stress. The workers or the employees working in the organization should be aware of the occupational stress because the occupational stress not only has a negative effect on the workers but at the same time, it has a negative effect on the companies as well.

Work related stress not only creates physiological or psychological health problems among the workers but at the same time, this kind of stress affects the cognition and the behavior of the workers.  The companies too can get affected by this kind of stress because, this kind of stress could create physiological problems, which could lead to problems like increase absenteeism in the company. The increase absenteeism, would affect the performance of the company, and it too may affect the productivity of the company.

Liu et al. (2012) stated that organizations should reduce the occupational stress on the employees in order to get the best endeavor from them. Incorporating basic stress reduction action is one of the major management strategies for reducing the occupational stress. Basic stress reduction action ensures that employees need to get a free work environment. Managers should never impose their own decision on the employees during the performance. Managers should provide priority and response to the service procedure of employees as well. As a result, employees would be motivated to perform well inside the organization instead of considering work as a stress.

Implementing participative leadership at the workplace is one of the major ways to reduce occupational stress at the workplace. With the help of participative leadership, the employees get immense opportunities to share their opinion regarding the business goal. Therefore, the leaders as well before taking any kind of decision at the workplace should make a collective decision. As a result, the employees feel free to provide effective services. The co-operation from the managers helps the employees to feel independent at the time of their performance. Therefore, work environment has been considered as one of the major factors for controlling and reducing occupational stress at the workplace.

Conclusion

The entire study has provided an in-depth understanding regarding the effectiveness of occupational health at the workplace. Employees are able to maintain healthy environment within workplace only when managers would like to provide them liberty in their own performance. Therefore, this particular study has focused to highlight some of the major articles regarding the importance of avoiding occupational stress at the workplace. In addition, different kinds of management strategies have also been pointed out in this specific study in order to know the ways of controlling occupational stress.

Reference List:

Diestel, S. and Schmidt, K.H., 2009. Mediator and moderator effects of demands on self-control in the relationship between work load and indicators of job strain. Work & Stress, 23(1), pp.60-79.

Liu, L., Chang, Y., Fu, J., Wang, J. and Wang, L., 2012. The mediating role of psychological capital on the association between occupational stress and depressive symptoms among Chinese physicians: a cross-sectional study.BMC Public Health, 12(1), p.1.

MacDonald, W., 2003. The impact of job demands and workload on stress and fatigue. Australian Psychologist, 38(2), pp.102-117.

Rosenthal, T. and Alter, A., 2012. Occupational stress and hypertension.Journal of the American Society of Hypertension, 6(1), pp.2-22.

Ruotsalainen, J.H., Verbeek, J.H., Mariné, A. and Serra, C., 2015. Preventing occupational stress in healthcare workers. The Cochrane Library.

Shirom, A., Melamed, S., Rogowski, O., Shapira, I. and Berliner, S., 2009. Workload, control, and social support effects on serum lipids: A longitudinal study among apparently healthy employed adults. Journal of occupational health psychology, 14(4), p.349.

Velnampy, T. and Aravinthan, S.A., 2013. Occupational Stress and Organizational Commitment in Private Banks: A Sri Lankan Experience.

Yong, M., Nasterlack, M., Pluto, R.P., Lang, S. and Oberlinner, C., 2013. Occupational stress perception and its potential impact on work ability.Work, 46(3), pp.347-354.