Summary

Stress, Health and sustainable working life.......................................................................................2

Lecture 1, 5/2/2024 - Sustainable working life.............................................................................................2

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Stress, Health and sustainable working life

Lecture 1, 5/2/2024 - Sustainable working life

If you create a healthy work environment it will create benefits on the individual level and the
individual worker, lower rate of burnouts and physical complaints. That would also benefit the
organization, where people work: It will always benefit the organization, less people quit so the
turnover ratio decreases, they show better performance levels, higher productivity levels. This also
translates to society benefits: national health costs will be reduced, less health costs for the
organization. It also translates to national health.

Sustainable work life: leaders lead well, good work life balance, having time to recovery from work,
good organization at policies, good job design.

A model very helpful to visualize individual health and

well being is the Igloo model: when you think of
occupational health you should always think about, the
Igloo. Every letter refers to a mechanism, to a different
level. This escalates from an individual level to the
society level.

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We can frame our course organization we look at this model.

Example of the organizational policies: 4 days working week.

Trends in working life

 Work intensification: people suffer from this trend.

- 24/7connectivity, global work: always checking emails and so on. People suffer from
work intensification, people always connecting 24/7. Keep your work always with
you, it’s really easy to stay connected to your job, easy to keep in touch.
- Flexible work, work-home balance, telework. Also, different working times round
the world. He boundaries between leisure time and work are quite permeable.
There are new globalized work environment.

 Rising prevalence of burnout

- Disability benefits due to psychological problems: There’s a rise of burnout:
disability benefits, costs have been rising due to psychological problem (for
example, form of depression and burnouts). The number are striking.
- 11% in 1967, 30% in the 90 ́s and >40% after 2017. Nowadays could be even higher.

 Self-management & self-exploitation: nowadays many companies work with self-managing

teams and they can really decide how, when, where to work. That also mean that there’s
nobody stopping you: that’s because there’s no manager in between. These are the goals
and you have to achieve them, if you don’t we may need to close this department.

 Alienating and competitive nature of capitalism

- Platform economies, self-employment(12%): it’s an extreme form of self-
management, you don’t have any contract. Basically people work for a company but
they are still self employed.they work few hours and they carry the risks of the
work.
- Rising inequality: Temporary contracts, precarious work.

 Demographic changes
- dual-career-families: it wasn’t that common 30 years back, we have to adjust cause
maybe people have careers in different places and they have families.
- aging work force: different priorities in life, different skills and needs when it comes
to work.
- Shortages in specific sectors: construction, healthcare, teaching, ICT. W need to
think how to make them work in the future.

 Automation/AI
- Decrease of simple jobs: many jobs with simple and repetitive tasks. Some jobs will
disappear and some other will increase, new skills will need to be implemented.

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 - Increase in jobs that require social & cognitive skills, lifelong learning. Some jobs
and tasks will disappear, and increase in other jobs with innovative skills.

Post work society

We have big change going on in working life, many jobs will disappear, so we will really need to
rethink our society structure and to insure that everybody has an income. We are already on the
move from work society to scientific society of meaning: we are already thinking differently about
work than the previous generations. There are different aspiration, less work, more choice. There
are radical changes coming out.

 Decoupling of work & income/livelihood

 Society of meaning (“Sinngesellschaft”)
 Radical change of work to be expected.

Models from HRM, well-being, performance relationship

Why does it matter? Why should we be caring about stress at work?

There are different ways to think about HR Management. There are different practicies that
companies may apply. They have developed different practices: they effect people well-being and
performances, they are always linked. The most common sight it’s a win-win situation and a
mutual gain perspective, one increases the other. If you have put HRM practicies in place this will
effect the well being and at the same time the performance. If you make people happy, they’re
more willing to engage into work, and being productive and make effort.

 Mutual gains: win-win, happy productive worker

 Behavioral / social exchange perspective
 Positive treatment by organizations must be reciprocated
 Conservation of resources: HRM-energy/resources- performance

Well-being
HRM practices +

Employee training, High

performance practices, +
Monitoring, Family-friendly
work practices
+ Performance
…

This second model below comes from a more labor process theory, from the sociology perspective.
Work and management are in a constant struggle. HRM practicies effect the well-being but this
could also lead to a lower performance. Well-being could also decrease performance: they become
lazy, the management will always try to reduce costs, improve the profitability and production

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while trying to reduce labor costs, increase profits: this will be at the expenses of the employees
There’s an exploitation idea behind.

 Conflicting outcomes: Labour process theory

 Management is under constant pressure to...
- Reduce costs
- Improve quality
- Raise productivity & profitability
- Lower unit labour costs

 At the expense of workers: work harder and under pressure

 Systematic exploitation

Well-being
HRM practices -

Employee training, High

performance practices, -
Monitoring, Family-friendly
work practices
+ Performance
…

There are conflicting outcomes into these studies: it’s not easy to show the actual results of HRM
polices and how to measure them.

 66% of the models showed support for mutual gains perspectives: if you have HRM
practicies in places, the benefits people between people’s well-being and this will also
effects productivity.
 5 studies (out of 46) showed some evidence for conflicting outcomes: when the company
will introduce beneficial HRM practicies for well-being there will be some reductions in
performance outcome.
 22% showed no relationships or fragmented relationships.
 Important limitations
- Small number of studies
- Single source data
- Cross-sectional
- Individual OR unit performance

Well-being
HRM practices +

Employee training, High

performance practices, +
Monitoring, Family-friendly
work practices
+ Performance
…
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Stress: origin and definitions

 Derived from Latin verb strictus, meaning “to draw tight”

 Incorporated in French language: estresse, meaning “narrowness, constriction, oppression”
 Middle English distress, denoting “hardship or force exerted on a person”
 “A state of mental or emotional strain or tension resulting from adverse or demanding
circumstances.”

Stress research: history

Stress research evolves from more physiological aspects. For a long time also animals gave insights
on the stress research. Starting from the first ones: stress modify biological systems in some ways.
We try to maintain the stable internal environment of body.

History From physiological/behavioristic perspectives...

 All the nonspecifically induced changes within a biologic system in response to an
aggressive outside agent, that is, the stressor;

 Stress results from disturbance of homeostasis (i.e., body’s attempt to maintain stable
internal environment);

 Fight-or-flight (Cannon) & GAS (Selye);

 Allostatic Load Model

- Stability through change, we pass to more psychological perspectives.
- Allostatic state: Reset of set points due exposure to chronic demands
- Allostatic load: symptoms and pathology caused by chronic allostatic state, always
activating to respond to the stress and the environment.

 to psychological perspectives...
- Role and importance of cognition in experiencing stress

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Stress is …(very important model this one)

 an interaction of...
- features of the environment or events (=stressors)
outside the person
- an individual’s response (psychological, physiological, and
behavioral) to environmental demands, threats, and
challenges (=strain)

 a particular relationship between the person and the

environment that is appraised by the person as taxing or
exceeding his or her resources and endangering his or her well-
being.

Here we can see the process: primary appraisal is when you enter in a
potential stressful situation, you notice what is happening in your
environment and you make sense either if it’s positive, or irrelevant or
dangerous. Once it’s dangerous, it’s seen as a stressor, but then comes
the secondary appraisal, so the ability to deal with the situation: do I
have enough resources to deal with the stress? If I do, I don’t perceive
the situation as stressful. It depends if it’s exceeding my resources.

Stressors: conditions, situations or events that cause strain

 Temporary, intermittent or chronic (so it comes back). Stress can be an be very temporary
and fleeting. It may also be a coming back situation, since there are different type of
stressors: chronic etc.
 Type of stressors

- Physical stressors: heat, poor ergonomics, lighting

- Task-related stressors: repetitive tasks, workload
- Role stressors: role ambiguity, inter-role, intra-role
- Social stressors: bullying, conflicts, poor management
- Work schedule-related stressors: long work hours, shift work, availability
- Career-related stressors: unclear or unfair performance evaluation systems, job
insecurity
- Stressful change processes: downsizing, merger or acquisition

They are divided into:

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 - Challenge stressors: they’re both stressful at the moment and energizing at the same time.
Deadline and workload, both stressful and it engages people, they are eager to overcome
the challenges, opportunity for growth and development.
- Hindrance: those stresses are always bad and negativity. They hinder the person from
achieving a goal. For example, a continuous interruption at work, a colleague always with
questions, or working without equipment, role conflicts when you’re not sure about your
role and responsibilities. It places you in a difficult positions.

Challenge stressors Hidrance stressors

 Energizing  Constrain personal achievement

 Contributing to performance opportunities  Hindering an employee's goal progress
 Opportunities for growth and development - Interruptions
- Job scope - Poor equipment
- Responsibility - Role conflicts
- Workload - Organizational constraints (e.g., job
- Time pressure insecurity, precarity)

Which are the symptoms of stress

1. Physical: most common ones, tension headache etc.

2. Psychological: burnout, depression, anxiety. Difficulty to focus.
3. Behavioral: the performance problem that people may show: If you’re not sure to reach a
certain performance, you may call in sick and not going to work, or yell at colleagues and
family members. It also concerns poor health behavior.

Physical Psychological Behavioral

 Fatigue  Burnout (exhaustion, cynicism,  Irritability

lack of accomplishment)  Withdrawal behaviors:
 Muscular
Work andtension
health  Depression absenteeism, turnover
 Headaches  Anxiety  Aggression
 Irritability  Low work performance
 Heart palpitations  Pessimism  Impatience
 Sleeping difficulties  Feelings of being overwhelmed  Disinterest
and unable to cope  Isolation
 Gastrointestinal problems  Cognitive difficulties (e.g.,  Poor health behaviors (e.g., eating,
concentration problems, mistakes) exercising, drug abuse)
 Dermatological disorders
 Risk taking (e.g., unsafe driving)

Work and Health

Why should we care?

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In this graph people feel that they have to work tight to deadlines from the ’90 to 2010. In the ’90,
50% of the people felt this was always the case. These numbers are expected to rise. Also, many
workers feel that stress is poorly dealt with in their companies, when the question asked was:
“How well does your organization deal about work-related stress?”

24% thinks that it’s been taken very seriously and well-cared of. If we sum some of the
percentages, 29% of the people thinks that it’s not very well handled.

Does your work affect your health? Red: Yes, mainly negatively; Blue: No;
Green: Yes, mainly positively.

Another analysis (meta-analysis) takes in

consideration the physical symptoms that
people report to have starting from 79 studies,
covering the period from 1993 and 2001, also
checking the national mortality register (in
order to know how many people died after
getting the symptoms). Below on the graph
we can see the different types of stressors,
and the correlation if the death occurred or
not. We can see the correlation between the
death, physical symptoms and stress.

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The risk that people have of dying of cardiovascular death because of stress at work. If there are
blue levels of strains the stress is lower,
but it increases when with a high level
of cardiovascular diseases there’s a
high level of job strain. Pretty similar
with the job demand, even if the
higher level seems to be the one in the
middle, while on the third is the
opposite: so, having autonomy and
control at work is seen as a buffer of
people health  when you have high
levels of control at work than you have the best level of cardio vascularity.

Looking at the effort reward imbalance, you have to invest a lot of effort while getting little in
return is also increasing the chances to cardiovascular death.

Transgenerational burden of stress

Stress doesn’t only effects workers themselves, but also the future generation: female workers that
have stress at work associates with the child diseases, such as metabolic diseases,
psychopathology and cardiovascular problem of the child. Prenatal stress concerns both the
mother and the infant.

- preterm birth
- metabolic disease
- cardiovascular disease
- psychopathology

Maternal stress relates to problems in infant, potentially crossing over to the next generations.

Effects of work-related stress

Stress is related to:

1. Physical health
2. Emotional well being
3. Work related

Physical Health: high blood pressure, cardiovascular

diseases, health complaints

Stress Emotional well-being: exhaustion: lack of energy,

weariness, lethargy, cynicism, family conflicts
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 Work related outcomes: loss of work motivation & work
engagement, low productivity & task performance, low
contextual performance, absenteeism & turnover
Social burden of stress

Work related outcomes also are really relevant for companies and
organizations: people who are stressed will suffer from a loss of
work motivation; they will show a lower level of work engagement.
In addition, they are most likely to absent or call in sick. It’s also a
burden for the society, but I’s hard to estimate those costs.

 Direct
- Medical (hospital admissions, physician fees,
medication)
- Non-medical (insurance, litigation, travel costs, ...)
 Indirect
- Productivity loss (sickness absence, turnover,
presenteeism, ...)
 Intangible: really hard to measure.
- Pain, suffering, loss of quality of life (willingness to
pay?)

Job-demand control support model (Karasek)

It’s the first model worth to mention.

They stated that autonomy and control
was seen as a buffer as a helpful element.
Workload works on the other hand. These
interacts in defying how people do. So,
when you have high levels of demand,
you’ll also have high levels of control 
there’s engagement.

Stress = demands x control. Support could

be also a third dimension.

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Low psychological demand but high control: the ones that may feel a little bit bored, not
challenged enough.

Then we add a new element that was added to the theory: the social support mechanism, a third
dimension. It’s the amount of support one can take from colleagues.

Here in this model support is added, while the formula for stress remains the same.

We can see here a third dimension. There’s an area of

healthy work and then there’s a combination of high
demand, little control and little social support  that’s a
risky area. In here one could go sick or burnout.

Variation of this traditional model: Job demand resources model (Demerouti et al)

They added two parts:

 Job demands linked to strain

 Job resources linked to work
motivation
 Demands & resources interact
 Resources seem to be more
important than demands

Effort reward imbalance, by Siegrist (it’s a third model)

How much people expect in return of their

effort.

 Sociological theory grounded in

reciprocity: people invest effort so in
return they expect to be rewarded.
What do I invest, how much recognition
and feedback to I get?
 Rewards: money, esteem, career
opportunities
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  Imbalance (high effort, low rewards) = reduced health

Exams: specific situation and then the view of a specific theory. For example, the graph about job
control  cardiovascular and discuss the graph of the stress = demands x control or the other one.

Person environment fit theory (Caplan)

It’s about different needs, motifs, and preferences that one

could have and what actually the job offers. The fit that may
be exist or not and the job people expect to have.

 Needs, motives and preferences of

the worker
 Requirements of the job, skills and
abilities of the worker
 Demands-ability fit and needs-
supply fit

Check o’net.

Conclusion

 Work affects health, well-being and performance negatively AND positively

 Stress is a fuzzy concept, difficult to define and measure
 Stress theories: from behavioral models explaining how stress affects the body to
psychological models explaining what factors cause stress and why

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