The regulation of work demands and strain.

Abstract

The theme of this chapter is stress and workload regulation and the relationships among work demands, well-being, and performance. The task and personal factors, such as controllability and coping, that may influence those relationships are discussed. It is argued that a multimeasurement approach is necessary to understand fully the nature of stress and its effects in terms of performance and safety in cognitively demanding work such as air-traffic control, process control, and medical monitoring. Some preliminary data are presented from a two-part study of air-traffic controllers that investigated the influence of naturally occurring workload on performance and psychological and physiological state.Lazarus (1991), among others, has suggested that to understand stress in the workplace individual patterns of response to various working conditions need to be studied, rather than simply attempting to identify adverse conditions of work. In other words, even if it were possible to identify all potential sources of stress in the workplace, this would not allow the confident prediction of the effects of these stressors on individual performance and well-being. A more detailed understanding is needed of the cognitive control processes that govern individual responses to different work demands. It is argued that individuals in many jobs, particularly those involving high levels of cognitive demands, may be able to exert some degree of control over their work to deal with perceived demands. Furthermore, individuals may differ in the extent to which they use different strategies in applying control activity. They may be used to prevent either negative psychological states or decrements in work performance in difficult or demanding situations (Hockey, 1986;Hockey, Briner, Tattersall, & Wiethoff, 1989;. General patterns of response-in terms of costs or benefits to the individual and organization related to performance, well-being, and health-are therefore likely to be difficult to predict. This is especially so, given the evidence that strain may be manifested in a number of different ways depending on the nature of the task and the individual (e.g., Broadbent, 1985;Frankenhaeuser, 1986;Hockey, 1986). In other words, differences in preferred styles of behavior and use of short-term strategies to deal with work demands may result in a variety of changes in performance, affective state, and psychophysiological activity.

Human Factors Measurement for Future Air Traffic Control Systems

“…Maxwell (1986) found that the main sources of stress for German ATCOs were connected with both operative aspects and organizational structures, such as fear of equipment failure, poor ability of other controllers, poor operating procedures by pilots, and being overcrowded. Other studies have reported similar results (Shimomitsu & Theorell, 1996;Tattersall & Farmer, 1995). On the other hand, Vogt and Kastner (2001) found that ATCO stress responses were almost exclusively affected by the number of aircraft under control and potential conflicts.…”

“…Nonetheless, stress has been measured in various ways; levels of ATCO stress have been documented in terms of physiological adaptations, such as changes in hormonal secretion (Maxwell, 1986;Wetherell, Hyland, & Harris, 2004), heart rate (Collet et al, 2009;Kumar, Weippert, Vilbrandt, Kruezfeld, & Stoll, 2007;Ming et al, 2004), and blood pressure (Maxwell, 1986;Ming et al, 2004). As previously mentioned, physiological measures offer advantages over other measures (e.g., provide objective data, may capture momentary fluctuations in operator stress levels) but also have their limitations and may therefore be seen as complementary to subjective measures already used in ATC research, such as the Dundee Stress State Questionnaire (Helton et al, 2005;Hitchcock et al, 2003), the Stress Diagnostic Survey (Lesiuk, 2008), the Occupational Stress Indicator (Tattersall & Farmer, 1995), the Recovery-Stress Questionnaire (Straussberger, 2006), the Scale of Feelings (Straussberger, 2006), and the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (Arvidsson et al, 2006). Finally, behavioral manifestations of arousal, such as distress, physical movements, and voice quality (Maxwell, 1986;Ming et al, 2004), have also been used to measure stress in ATCOs.…”

The questionnaire for diagnosing mobbing in employees’ relationships

“…Studies of health and welfare in organisations show that tension at work has a significant negative impact, weakens the mental and physical health of the employee, encourages sick leave abuse or inspires employees to seek damages and/or reduces work efficiency (Farrell & Geist-Martin, 2005). In addition, tension in the workplace is related to psychological burnout (Cooper, Dewe, & O'Driscoll, 2001;Tattersall & Farmer, 1995) and to social health, defined as the quality of individual network of personal and work relationships (Farrell & Geist-Martin, 2005;Tracy, Lutgen-Sandvik, & Alberts, 2006), which has a negative impact on the performance of the entire organisation: turnover, a decrease in production, efficiency and creativity, the loss of reputation and the possibility of legal proceedings (Bultena, 2008). The consequences of mobbing to an individual's health and that of their family were analysed by Duffy and Sperry (2007), who present two clinical case studies of workplace mobbing in academia.…”

Communicating Social Health

“…Occupational stress has been shown to cause psychological strain. Studies reveal that this work-related stress can lead to lower self-esteem, decreased job satisfaction, and increased anxiety and depression (Cooper et al, 2001;Kahn & Byosiere, 1992;Pelletier, 1984;Tattersall & Farmer, 1995). Other common symptoms of psychological strain include bouts of crying, hostile words or actions, and complaints of boredom and isolation (Kahn & Byosiere, 1992;Ross & Altmaier, 1994).…”