Job crafting
What can you do yourself to improve how the job fits you?
On the 19th of June 2013 there was a workplace accident in a manure silo at a dairy farm, which resulted in three fatalities and a serious injury. An employee of a specialized cleaning company had been cleaning and repairing the inside of the silo. Despite wearing an air mask he was overcome by manure gasses, his colleague called for help and entered the silo unprotected, followed by an agricultural contractor from the farm and the farm owner Mark. They were all overcome by the manure gasses. Mark’s father alerted the emergency services and tried to make a hole in the steel silo with his tractor to free the victims from the predicament, but his attempts were unsuccessful. Eventually, the fire brigade made a hole in the silo and the victims were resuscitated, but only the agricultural contractor survived.
What were the occupational hazards in this case?
Definition occupational hazards
The working conditions that may result in workplace accidents or workplace diseases.
Kinds of occupational hazards that exist in the workplace
What example belongs to what kind of occupational hazard?
What must an organisation do to protect health and safety of employees?
The organisation is legally bound to provide safe and healthy work.
Who is primarily responsible for the safety and health of the employees?
The employer
What should the employer do first and foremost when there is a occupational hazard?
Tackle the hazard at the source
What should the organisation focus on in terms of the trichotomy?
On the work, not the person or the organisation.
What can and must the employer do to protect the health and safety of employees? And in what order?
What example belongs to what step an employer can take in order to protect the health and safety of employees?
Promoting the workload capacity of employees such as training for dealing with aggression.
Replacing toxic materials.
The safety culture: social norms regarding safety.
Providing training and education such as teaching employees to work safely.
Personal protection equipment such as a harness or a helmet.
Sparing measures, to protect risk groups from exposure.
Hochschild (1983)
Hochschild (1983) reports on research conducted on flight attendants, she looked into the often implicit social rules concerning the emotions that must be shown or hidden at work. Flight attendants have to deal with the emotions of passengers while always remaining friendly themselves.
What is emotional labour?
A special kind of psychosocial demand
Discrepancy between experienced and displayed emotion
In many service oriented occupations you’re expected to always smile while you work, which is difficult if it doesn’t match with the emotion you are experiencing. It can be difficult to hide negative emotions when you have to show positive emotions at the same time. This emotional discrepancy can lead to emotional exhaustion.
What are the two strategies in dealing with the discrepancy between experienced and displayed emotion?
Article by Ybema & Van Dam (2014)
Cross-sectional study among three groups of occupations
What was measured in the article by Ybema & Van Dam (2014)?
What did Ybema & Van Dam (2014) examine?
To what extent these display rules are related to emotional exhaustion and work engagement. It turned out that the same pattern occurred in all three groups of occupations.
What are the results of Ybema & Van Dam (2014)?
How can the results by Ybema & Van Dam (2014) be explained?
This can be explained by the JD-R model, hiding negative emotions is a job demand whereas showing positive emotions can be seen as a challenge which enhances job resources.
What is important to remember in the article by Ybema & Van Dam (2014)?
That it is a cross sectional study, which means that reverse effects can also play a role.
How should employees deal with negative emotions at work?
Theories of work design
There are a number of influential theories of work design that focus on how the work should be designed such that employees can do their job in a productive and motivated manner.
Frederick Taylor (1911): Principles of scientific management
He maintained that work tasks should be divided into the smallest possible units, such that every employee can fulfil his own task in a specialized manner. It has really improved productivity but it also led to a degraded quality of work tasks and to alienation from work tasks.