Workplace and workforce 2000+ – the future of our work environment

Abstract

Flexibilization will lead to a core group with unlimited full employment and an increasing larger group of short-term limited and/or part-time employees who face severe employment risks, ultimately resulting in stress. Flexibilization will also affect the workplace. Information technologies will dissolve social entities. The virtual company suppresses social interaction and will as a consequence create new forms of alienation. Decentralization will increase the responsibility for business processes. Employees will be regarded as business process owners and will be held responsible for their results, a situation which again creates new stress factors. Globalization enhances competition, which in turn will encourage competitive attitudes at the workplace. Internal market mechanisms will take the place of performance appraisals by management. Market evaluation will substitute leadership styles and communication, which stand for the human side of enterprise. The psychosocial problems arising from these developments will produce new challenges for occupational health professionals.

Impact of lifestyle and technology developments on sleep

“…Flexibilization is a relatively new concept in organizational management, and is linked to trends in globalized economy 46. Such nonstandard work schedules are highly variable among organizations, and may include working evenings, weekends, split shifts, on call hours or compressed work weeks 27,30.…”

Is Fixed-Term Employment a New Risk for Adverse Physical Working Conditions?

“…There were grounds for suspecting that the intensive utilisation of non-standard employment made the division between the core and the periphery labour forces sharper and generated a two-tier system within workplaces: "good" jobs with development opportunities for the core (i.e., permanent) workers, while "bad", stressful and monotonous jobs went to the peripheral (i.e., fixed-term and other non-permanent) workers. The risk was that improvements in working conditions would benefit only the core workers [2,11,21]. The hypothesis of this study was derived from the aforementioned situation: we suspected that fixed-term employees incurred a poor physical work environment.…”

“…"Non-standard" covers a wide range of jobs from part-time work to self-employment. However, the very phrase suggests the deterioration of a cornerstone of modern wage labour: a life-long contract of full-time employment [1,2]. This study concentrates on fixed-term employment, that is, a situation in which the duration of the employment contract is limited and has neither an explicit nor implicit promise of continuity (see, e.g., [3]).…”

Role of Trade Unions in Workplace Health Promotion

“…The workplace communities were selected to represent industry, construction, transport, communications, services, teaching, and municipalities ( Table 1). The selection was gender sensitive and Table 1 Test targets in the workplace health promotion feasibility study a Road paving company [27] Auxiliary nurses (hospital) [91] Beverage delivery operators [43] Hotel and restaurant [32] Municipal employees [76]…”

“…Moving the decision-making power from worksites to distant owners, along with calculations for instant profit, tends to threaten workers' influence over their working conditions. Based on trend extrapolations, simulation, and Delphi methodology, Oechsler (32) expects that flexibilization, decentralization, and globalization will greatly increase the risks of unemployment, itself a health hazard (33), by dissolving social entities through information technologies and enhancement of competition. This, Oechsler concludes, will pose new challenges to occupational health professionals.…”