Job Demands

Sustained or intense high levels of physical, mental or emotional effort which are unreasonable or chronically exceed workers’ skills, or sustained low levels of physical, mental or emotional effort.

Job demands refer to both cognitive and emotional demands of work. Extremely high workloads, pressure to work long hours and multiple competing tasks over an extended period of time with no rest or recovery can be considered a risk, combined with other factors such as role conflict it may lead to a psychological hazard.

High job demands are characterized by excessive workload, tight deadlines, and unrealistic expectations. This can lead to stress, anxiety, and burnout.

Let’s Look at an Example

Stan is a junior engineer, in his first role out of Uni, he feels like he is still learning how best to manage his time whilst learning new process and technology.  

Stan is working in a fast paced tech environment, he is working on a big project with a deadline at the end of year, he works long hours and keeps missing deadlines as he doesn’t have enough time to get everything done.

He notices he is starting to have trouble sleeping and having overwhelming anxious thoughts.  

What Contributes To High Job Demands

There are a number of factors that can contribute to high job demands, including:

• Allocating tasks to workers that are beyond their level of competence or capacity.
• Placing excessive expectations on new or existing workers to learn new tasks quickly.
• Giving unreasonable deadlines for work tasks or being pressured to complete work tasks outside of work hours or while on leave.
• Lack of resources required to complete tasks and projects, be it people, financial or physical resources.
• Absence of team members through illness or leave.
• Needing to quickly evaluate complex situations and make effective decisions under pressure, such as in medical or policing work.

Emotional Demands

Similarly, high emotional demands include:

• Dealing with customer/client complaints or delivering bad news to customers, clients or co-workers.
• Engaging in performance conversations with underperforming workers or undertaking disciplinary processes.
• Providing support to customers, clients or co-workers that are emotionally distressed.
• Job requirements that specify workers can only express organisation approved emotions while at work (e.g. flight attendances being directed to always be smiling and happy whilst on duty).

Consequences of high job demands

Increased stress levels, anxiety and depression, burnout, physical health problems, such as headaches, stomach-aches, and high blood pressure, reduced productivity, increased rates of absenteeism and turnover.

Control Measures For High Job Demands

here are a number of control measures that can be implemented to reduce the risk of high job demands. These include:

• Providing employees with realistic workloads and deadlines
• Giving employees the resources they need to do their jobs
• Creating a supportive work environment
• Promoting work-life balance

The following recommendations are made to reduce the risk of high job demands:

• Conduct a workplace risk assessment to identify and assess the risks of high job demands.
• Implement control measures to reduce the risk of high job demands.
• Monitor the effectiveness of control measures and make adjustments as needed.

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