Increased pressure, intensification of work and stress related ill-health
P-O Börnfelt, Ph D. in Working life studies.
Since the 1990s working life has become more intensified. Demands and pressure in working life have increased. As a consequence, there has been a rise in stress related ill-health in several countries. This negative trend raises questions about how we can design more sustainable work organisations, which do not waste human resources.
The general trend over the last 3–4 decades is that workers experience increased work intensity and tighter deadlines. They report that it is increasingly difficult to finish work within the time available, according to research by Duncan Gallie, Professor in Sociology, Oxford University. A recent global overview from ILO and Eurofond showed that 33 percent of workers in the EU and 46 percent in the US work at high speed three-quarters of the time or more. 37 percent of workers in the EU and 48 percent in the US work to tight deadlines three-quarters of the time or more.
The health risks of an intensive working life have been highlighted by stress research. High demands on work performance, combined with lack of control over the planning and how to carry out work, increases the risk of developing stress related illnesses, such as burnout.
A few studies that track stress related ill-health over time indicate an increase in stress related ill-health. In the UK, according to an estimation based on the labour force survey 2019, stress related mental ill-health from work has been relatively stable since 2001 but has increased somewhat during the last few years. In 2019 stress related ill-health from work accounted for 44 percent of all cases of ill-health in the UK . Also, there seems to be a rising trend of burnout over time in some countries. Burnout can be explained as overall exhaustion from work overload, leading to cognitive weariness, depression and reduced resilience. The Netherland Working Condition Survey 2007–2016, using a sample of over 40,000 employees, showed a rise in burnout from 11.3 percent in 2007 to 14.6 in 2016. A Portuguese study using a sample of over 38,000 professionals in four sectors; education, health, distribution and service saw an increase in burnout from 8 percent in 2008 to 15 percent 2013 . In Sweden, increasing job demands, and to some extent the decreased control of working pace in the 1990s resulted in a rise in stress related mental illness. In 1996, 6 percent of women and 3 percent of men had job-related mental illness. In 2003 the proportions had risen to 14 percent for women and 8 percent for men. From 2004 onwards there was a slight decline in job-related mental illness in Sweden, but from 2012 the numbers started to rise again. In 2016 the number of illness cases due to stress and high workload were back at the 2003 level .
What then are the causes behind this negative mental health trend in working life? We have seen a neoliberal wave in politics, society and working life the last 3–4 decades. According to neoliberalism, governments should encourage unregulated markets. Neoliberalism also believes the labour market should be as unregulated as possible. Trade unions are seen as an obstruction to a free labour market. Subsequently, employee influence and trade union power have declined over time. Examples of decline in union density (the proportion of the workforce who are members of a union) from 1980 to 2010: The UK from 51 to 27 percent, Germany from 35 to 19 percent, The Netherlands from 35 to 19 percent, the US from 23 to 12 percent, and France from 18 to 8 percent. Due to the decline in union density, unions have less negotiation power to defend decent and healthy working conditions.
Another driving force behind the changes in working life is a globalized economy and the growth of a global deregulated financial sector. The financial markets have increased their expectations of short-term gains and on return on investment. Companies are therefore tempted to reduce staff levels in order to cut costs.
These changes in society have paved the way for new work organisation models which emphasise reduced staff levels, increased control and surveillance, such as Lean production. In lean production the focus is to create fast and efficient processes with fewer resources such as staff. This tends to intensify work for the remaining work force. Parts and products are to be delivered just-in-time (JIT) in order to minimise inventory. The JIT-principle combined with limited resources such as staff, and a sophisticated system of control mechanisms put a lot of pressure on workers. Lean production has, as a consequence, been criticized for high levels of stress and work-related ill-health.
New Public Management (NPM) is based on neoliberal principles and was introduced in the public sector in the 1980s with the claimed benefits higher efficiency and reduced costs. The private company competing in a market is seen as an ideal model in NPM. NPM strives to reduce government spending in the public welfare sector, which results in cutting down on staff numbers. For example, the number of civil servants in the UK central government was cut by a third between 1980 and 2010. However, contrary to what NPM promises, the running costs have risen considerably due to higher costs for consultancy and subcontractors. In Sweden, during the 1990s, there was also substantial downsizing in the public sector. In Swedish hospitals the staff levels were cut by 20 percent on average. It is among workers in county councils, where most of the healthcare workers are employed, the sharpest rise in work demands has been seen in Sweden.
Visualisation of work processes and workers is a control method used in lean production. Organisations are increasingly using IT for surveillance which is also built on the control method visualisation. With the huge increase of people working from home because of the COVID-19 pandemic, companies who provide software for remote monitoring and surveillance have seen demand surge, as reported in the Guardian. According to a study from the Trades Union Congress a whole range of surveillance methods are used by some employers in the UK such as: monitoring workers using webcams on work computers, recording phone calls, using keystroke-logging to monitor how much and when workers are typing, monitoring and limiting the time workers spend going to the toilet.
These contemporary work organisation models and control methods have short-term goals: high expectations of short-term gains. Organisations are therefore tempted to reduce staff levels and use several different control and surveillance methods to press people to perform at their maximum capacity. Such working conditions tend to cause stress related ill-health.
These negative working life trends raise questions of how we can design more sustainable work organisations, which do not waste human resources. In the sustainable work organisation, a good work environment and efficiency are combined. The idea is that skilled and empowered workers contribute to workplace innovation, which in turn leads to good work and high organisational performance. Healthy working conditions are characterized by participation in decision-making, a degree of autonomy for the individual to carry out work, avoiding excessive work load, competence development, social interaction and support from colleagues, open communication, and managers who treat people with respect and dignity.
Of course, far from all workplaces have a stressful and indecent work environment. Many organisations have healthy work environments similar to the sustainable work organisation, described above. However, much more needs to be done to turn the negative trend around.
