Safety and Workforce Stress in an Industrial Workforce - Essay Example

? Safety and Workforce Stress in an Industrial Workforce: A Review of Literature by School December 07, 12-07 Safety and Workforce Stress in an Industrial Workforce Introduction This is a literature review about safety and workforce stress in an industrial workforce. The purpose of this literature review is to write down information related to safety and stress issues of the workforce belonging to industry as it is written in the peer reviewed articles and other kinds of literature that have been published to date, and also to convey more information that can be useful to the industrial organizations who want to improve the safety of their workers and reduce their stress. Historically, psychologists, managers, researchers, and other professionals both in the academia and industry have studied different aspects of safety and stress related to the industrial workforce. Safety is basically of two types, which are personal safety and environmental safety whereas the causes of stress are different for different workers. Employers providing safety training and equipment to their workers in the industrial organizations and making policies to ensure environmental safety by the workers as well as the efforts of managers to reduce the stress of the workers are common practices and are widely known. Safety is basically categorized into two main types in the organizational studies; personal safety and environmental safety. Personal safety is the safety of the workers and environmental safety is the safety of the environment. Environmental safety is also discussed in this paper because workers in the industrial organizations assume the responsibility like their seniors and managers to ensure the environmental safety at their level. Both types of safety when considered together give a holistic perspective of safety in the industrial organizations. Organizations differ in the extent to which they promote workers’ safety as well as the extent to which they motivate the workers to take measures to protect the environment. Likewise, workers in different industrial organizations face stress because of different reasons. For some, too much time on the job is a problem, whereas others are afraid that they can be fired by the managers any time. These and many other similar factors induce stress in the workers that has a negative effect on their performance in the work. It is widely known that both the blue and the white collar workers, managers, and all kinds of staff in the industrial organizations all over the world are facing many challenges with respect to safety and stress and a major contributing factor is the economic downfall. The recent global financial crisis has caused the managers and employers to take measures to reduce the expenditures. “The Current Economic and Financial Crisis put a major Stress on Workers” (Velciu, Dragoiu, and Mladen, 2010, p. 17). Many employers have cut down costs by firing the employees, reducing the wages of those that stayed employed, and also increasing the workload upon them. As a result of this, workers have faced stress. Also, since providing the workers with safety training and safety equipment incurs the employers a lot of cost, many employers have compromised upon the safety aspects of their work to remove those costs. As a result of this, workers are working in unsafe conditions and this has also contributed to their stress. In addition to that, in order to make profits, industrial organizations have started to overlook the environmental safety because ensuring environmental safety also incurs them a lot of cost. Hence, in the recent years, safety has been compromised upon at all levels. This paper starts by obtaining information from the literature review. The following paragraph shows the method that has been used to collect the information from the literature. Method Criteria for the review of literature Many books about safety and stress of workers in the industrial organizations were studied. Peer-reviewed journal articles were obtained both from the library and also from the internet and it was tried to include information from the most recent studies, preferably those that have been done within the last five years. Adequacy of information Only those editorials and articles were included in the literature review that were written by researchers in the field of safety and stress. Almost all articles selected for the literature review have been peer-reviewed and have also been published in various renowned journals. The content from non-professional websites like blogs or non-academic sources was not included in the literature review. Literature review Safety of workers in the industrial organizations Workers in the industrial organizations are exposed to a variety of safety issues that can be broadly classified into two types, which are personal safety and environmental safety. Personal safety Editorials and articles that discussed personal safety of the workers were reviewed. Literature review suggests that among all industries, the industry that has the highest rate of accident among workers is the construction industry, “With 1,178 out of 4,956 on-the-job fatalities in the private sector in 2007, no other industry ranks higher than construction” (Levine, 2008). The main reason for such high risk of safety in the construction industry is the unpredictable nature and difficulty of the construction activities (Bhattacharjee, Ghosh, and Young-Corbett, 2011). This imparts the need to train the workers for safety. Instruction-based training should be coupled with intervention of behavioral safety to have a large and long-term effect on the workers so that their safety behavior is improved (Zohar and Erev, 2007, p. 133). Managers need to tell the workers what personal protective equipment like goggles, ear-muffs, safety shoes, and helmets are available for them to keep them safe at the workplace and when each of these things have to be worn to keep safe. There should also be appropriate check system to ensure that all workers comply with the rules of the organization. Environmental safety Editorials and articles that discussed environmental safety issues related to workers were reviewed. To implement safety measures in the best way, managers should first see what kind of environmental hazards are the workers exposed to because different kinds of environmental hazards require different kinds of training for the workers. “For safety knowledge and safety performance, highly engaging training was considerably more effective than less engaging training when hazardous event/exposure severity was high, whereas highly and less engaging training had comparable levels of effectiveness when hazardous event/exposure severity was low” (Burke et al., 2011, p. 46). The best way to develop the skill to assess the environmental safety hazards for the organizations is to work in close collaboration with the academic world. Organizations in the industry must draw help from the academic researchers in the universities and colleges for this purpose. “US nanotechnology executives’ survey results indicate that companies involved in research collaboration with universities show greater confidence in their ability to assess such risk and greater awareness that lack of safety standards could compromise future growth” (Galizzi, 2011, p. 70). Workers’ stress in organizations Editorials and articles that discussed workers’ stress in organizations were reviewed. Workers in organizations face stress because of a variety of reasons that include but are not limited to work-life imbalance, lack of safety, lack of job security, too much work, distance from friends and family, too much burden of work, and not enough pay. Recently, the global financial crisis became a very important cause of workers’ stress because their pays were reduced and the workload upon them was increased a lot. “Work-related stress and absence ascribed to work-related stress were signi?cantly greater during recession than prior to it” (Houdmont, Kerr, and Addley, 2012, p. 98). Workers cannot be happy and cannot do good work when they are in stress. There is need for the managers to take adequate measures to remove the stress of workers and keep them motivated at the workplace. “Work stress should not be taken for granted but pragmatic measures should be employed to deal with it and void eventual negative effect on both, job satisfaction and organizational commitment” (Bytyqi, Reshani, and Hasani, 2010, p. 161). A lot of theories have been proposed in the past to motivate the workers that include but are not limited to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory, and Herzberg’s motivational theory. Managers should see which of the theories works best in the context of their organization and should adopt measures to reduce the stress of workers and motivate them for work accordingly. Conclusion This paper presents the literature review done for the topic of safety and stress of workforce in the industrial organizations. A lot of research has been conducted about the safety and stress of organizational workers in the recent years. Especially, after the recent global financial crisis, such researches have increased in number because experts both in the academia and the industry suspect that the global financial crisis has heavily impacted the organizational practices in a bad way. A lot of literature was reviewed and findings of some of the researches were included in this paper. Workers in any industrial organization are exposed to two types of safety problems, the first is the risk to their safety because of their own unsafe behaviors, and the second is the risk to their safety because of environmental hazards. Both the issues of safety and stress have many implications for the managers. Since the managers assume the decision making authority, it is primarily their responsibility to take measures that not only reduce the risk to the safety of workers but also reduce the stress of workers in the organization. Managers should provide the workers with training to make them aware of the potential risk in the organization and so that the workers can execute safe behaviors on the work. Managers should also provide the workers with personal protective equipment to facilitate the workers in safety. In addition to that, managers of organizations should develop links with the academia to know what the latest trends in safety are and what the latest research suggests. Organizations can gain competitive advantage by implementing the latest measures of safety found by research. Likewise, it is the managers’ responsibility to take measures to reduce the stress of workers. This can be achieved by understanding the psychology of workers and trying to find out what is troubling them at the work and how they can be motivated. Apparently, it seems that spending money on workers to motivate them is like reducing the profitability of the business of the organizations, whereas in reality, this practice increases the profitability of business because when workers are motivated, they do better work without stress and any kind of worry. References: Al-Sari, M. I., and Al-Khatib, I. A. (2012). Workers’ safety in the construction industry in the southern West Bank of Palestine. Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal. 18(10), 1028-1033. Retrieved from http://applications.emro.who.int/emhj/v18/10/2012_18_10_1028_1033.pdf. Bhattacharjee, S., Ghosh, S., and Young-Corbett, D. (2011). Safety Improvement Approaches in Construction Industry: A Review and Future Directions. 47th ASC Annual International Conference Proceedings. Retrieved from http://ascpro.ascweb.org/chair/paper/CPGT286002011.pdf. Burke, M. J., Salvador, R. O., Smith-Crowe, K., Chan-Serafin, S., Smith, A., and Sonesh, S. (2011). The Dread Factor: How Hazards and Safety Training Influence Learning and Performance. Journal of Applied Psychology. 96(1), 46-70. Retrieved from http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/apl-96-1-46.pdf. Bytyqi, F., Reshani, V., and Hasani, V. (2010). Work Stress, Job Satisfaction and Organizational Commitment among Public Employees before Privatization. European Journal of Social Sciences. 18(1), 156-162. Retrieved from http://www.eurojournals.com/ejss_18_1_13.pdf. Galizzi, M. (2011). Firms’ Perceptions of Health and Environmental Hazards and Regulations: Evidence from a Survey of U.S. Nanotechnology Companies. Journal of Applied Business and Economics. 12(6), 70-82. Retrieved from http://www.na-businesspress.com/JABE/GalizziWeb12-6.pdf. Houdmont, J., Kerr, R., and Addley, K. (2012). Psychosocial factors and economic recession: the Stormont Study. Occupational Medicine. 62, 98-104. Retrieved from http://www.oxfordjournals.org/our_journals/occmed/resource/occmed%20press%20release.pdf. Levine, L. (2008, Nov. 21). Worker Safety in the Construction Industry: The Crane and Derrick Standard. CSR Report for Congress. Retrieved from http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RL34658.pdf. Zohar, D., and Erev, I. (2007). On the dif?culty of promoting workers’ safety behaviour: overcoming the underweighting of routine risks. International Journal of Risk Assessment and Management. 7(2), 122-136. Retrieved from http://ie.technion.ac.il/Home/Users/erev/Zohar_Erev.pdf. Velciu, M., Dragoiu, C. I., and Mladen, L. (2010). Stress in a Changing World of Work. European Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies. 2, 16-22. Retrieved from http://www.ejist.ro/EJIS-2-16-22.pdf. Read More