‘Stressed out of my box’: employee experience of lean working and occupational ill-health in clerical work in the UK public sector

Abstract

Occupational health and safety (OHS) is under-researched in the sociology of work and employment. This deficit is most pronounced for white-collar occupations. Despite growing awareness of the significance of psychosocial conditions -notably stress -and musculoskeletal disorders, white-collar work is considered by conventional OHS discourse to be 'safe'.

Human resource management, Lean processes and outcomes for employees: towards a research agenda

“…Drawing on qualitative data, the authors examine how teams emerged from different sites within HMRC, and with different effects within different teams and workers. While the authors partially corroborate other reports (Carter et al, 2011(Carter et al, , 2013 of workers dissatisfaction with the deskilling, task simplification and standardisation that resulted from the introduction of Lean, they also seek to understand the alternative responses by some employees who reported some appreciation of Lean, especially the use of teamwork. While national-level site teams engaged in problem-solving that included the authority to make changes to standard operating protocols, at most HMRC sites teamwork was reinvented as workplace co-operation and information-sharing among employees with a primary aim of achieving operational targets.…”

“…For example, Turner (2012) argues that the introduction of Lean benefits employees due to improved skills development and greater increased involvement in process improvement decisions. Other scholars claim a negative impact on at least some managers and employees as a result of work intensification and disempowerment (AndersonConnelly, Grunberg, Greenberg, & Moore, 2002;Carter et al, 2013;Grugulis & Lloyd, 2010;Jones, Latham, & Betta, 2013;Stewart et al, 2009;Torella, Falzon, & Morais, 2012;Vidal, 2007).…”

Teamworking and Lean revisited: a reply to Carter et al.

“…As part of the attempt to draw the wider implications of these findings, we set them against what Carter et al had found in their study of Lean in the same organization (Carter et al, 2011a(Carter et al, , 2011b(Carter et al, , 2013a(Carter et al, , 2013b. Our argument here was that Carter et al had taken little or no account of the way in which teamworking operated in HMRC, and that, had they done so, then it might have been easier to understand the differences between their findings and ours-and also between their findings and the results of an official employee survey undertaken at around the same time (Civil Service People Survey, 2011).…”

“…Carter et al (2015: 4) place their own work squarely in this tradition, but we cite four of their papers (Carter et al, 2011a;2011b;2013a;2013b) and address in a direct way the issues they raise-this is precisely what has generated their response. They might not like how we interpret their work, and they are, of course, quite entitled to respond to this interpretation.…”

“…They describe the ways in which they claim that this literature portrays lean teams (Carter et al, 2015: 4), but provide no specific references to back this up. (Carter et al, 2011a;2011b;2013a; 2013b) that we cite in our original article (Procter and Radnor, 2014), then only one of them (Carter et al, 2013b) cites the majority of the papers on their recommended reading list.…”