‘Satisfiers’ recommended to increase job enjoyment

Press, 8 January 1983, Page 10

‘Satisfiers’ recommended to increase job enjoyment

Boring jobs can be bad for you.

MICHAEL LITTLEJOHNS,

of

NZPA-Reuter, reports from the United Nations.

Boring work can severely affect health, says a United Nations agency which recommends "satisfiers" — well-known but seldom-used measures that raise job enjoyment — to allay boredom.

Physical ills, emotional upsets and family problems often develop when workers encounter too much day-to-day job stress, according to

the International Labour Office (1.L.0.). ‘‘Stress sickness" was most often manifested in emotional and physical exhaustion. coupled with an insidious sense of helplessness. an agency study found.

Most disturbing, the report said, was a feeling of increased insecurity induced by vague threatening factors

— social, managerial and environmental — outside a worker's control. But stress was not necessarily something that .should be avoided, the report said. Stress often mobilised extra energy to cope with sudden demand, thus restoring equilibrium.

The syndrome was most common among large numbers of workers doing

simple, montonous. repetitive jobs better suited to mechanical robots than humans, the report added. This monotonous work was often done in conditions of additional stress, through excessive heat or cold, vibrations or exposure to toxic fumes.

Damaging stress set in when the human body was bombarded by too many stimuli for too long beyond the threshold of normal tolerance. which differed among individuals, the 1.L.0. said.

Few would think of driving a complicated machine beyond its limits or risk overloading an expensive computer. But human bodies and brains were often pushed far beyond their limits — despite such physical warning signs as pallor, perspiration, fast pulse and fatigue. Although these alarms tended to disappear as the body adapted to increasing strain, its capacity for adaptation was limited and resistance to pressure waned until exhaustion took over.

At this point, according to the report, stress overload might produce emotional disturbance, chronic fatigue, abdominal disorders, allergic and kidney diseases and — most feared of all — heart attack.

Contrary to common supposition, top executives and decision-makers do not have the most stressful jobs, the 1.L.0. said. Foremen, supervisors, assemblers and relief workers doing repetitive jobs, for example on a conveyor belt, are under greater stress than their bosses.

Most people, the study found, are not so highly motivated that they can contain stress, so there is a ‘need to reduce its physical and psychological causes through "satisfiers."

Among those recommended were better pay. job security, prestige and status, opportunities for advancement, creativity, sympathetic supervision, a friendly atmosphere at the workplace and competent management.

The study found that construction workers, miners, long-distance drivers and people in general doing heavy, dangerous or dehumanising work tended to be obsessed about their wages. Workers in some automated plants rated job security as their main concern, and where wages and security were reasonable workers looked for challenging work, competent management, participation, advancement and friendly treatment.