Control measures for Categories of Work
Control measures for Category 2 Work – where people generated their own stressors
Category of Work
Category Two – The work does not contain inherently difficult aspects nor is it so organized as to be difficult to cope with, but individuals, as an individual choice, work unhealthy or unsafe routines – for a variety of reasons.
Interventions to eliminate hazards
Judicious counseling - Do not take advantage of people who are willing to work more than is good.
Insisting on appropriate standards of conduct at work.
Interventions to Isolate these Hazards
Training about the dangers of and loss of productivity associated with prolonged hours of work or inadequate recuperative time.
Judicious counseling and restriction of output requests where the employer is aware of personal or “out of work” peaks of demand (e.g. a mother caring for a gravely ill child).
Control measures for Category 3 Work – Work which may be over-demanding due to the way it is organised
Category of Work
Category Three – The work does not contain inherently difficult aspects but is so organized that a substantial proportion of the people doing it find difficulty in coping.
Interventions to Eliminate of hazards
Identify and eliminate or minimise organizational and contextual work factors leading to fatigue such as:
Job/Task Design
- Rigid work practices
- Role or task ambiguity
- Loss of or lack of control of work pacing or scheduling
- Lack of variety &/or short work cycles
- Fragmented or meaningless work.
- Under-utilisation of skill
- Work over or under load
- High levels of pacing or time pressure.
- Shift work
- Inflexible work schedules
- Unpredictable working hours
- Long or unsociable work hours
Workplace relationships
- Poor communication
- Continual dealing with customers
- Low participation in decision making
- Poor relationships at work
- Interpersonal conflict & violence at work
Support at work
- Non supportive work culture
- Lack of social support at work
- Role conflict
Prospects and value
- Career uncertainty or stagnation
- Poor status or status incongruity
- Job insecurity
- Work with low social value
Miscellaneous
- Physical isolation
- Conflicting demands of work and home life
- Dual career problems.
Interventions to Isolate these Hazards
Where elimination is impracticable, isolate the factors identified to:
- specific portions of the work cycle
- specially trained personnel
- special work groups employed specifically for that purpose.
Interventions to Minimise these Hazards
Primary Prevention Reduce the extent of and/or impact of stressors
- Reduce the extent of stressors by ensuring regular and adequate time away from organizational/context of person - work interface. This could include time spent on training, completing paperwork and job rotation.
- Reduce the extent of stressors by ensuring limited exposure by job rotation, multi-skilling etc.
- Reducing the impact of stressors by training.
- Reducing the impact of stressors by working with producer/customer groups to produce joint understanding of what is to be delivered by when.
Secondary Prevention Increase the goodness of fit between people and tasks by selection or training and provide support for people at work.
- Best practice personnel selection (don’t appoint if no one is suitable).
- Adequate training including ongoing training
- Audit and feedback by competent peers coupled to further training if required.
- Ensuring output demands do not interfere with planned, adequate recuperative breaks.
- Prompt attention to organizational impediments to optimum work practice.
- Ensuring required outputs reflect skills, training and job demands rather than bureaucratic requirements (don’t have Ph D’s doing the office typing)
Tertiary Prevention Alter the way people perceive and deal with the demands placed on them (and the effects of these demands) — the typical “stress management” approach.
- Adequate communication between employer and employee.
- Monitoring and adjusting of workloads to match abilities
- Judicious use of leave entitlements
- “Stress management”
- Managing perceptions and expectations of employers, employees and clients to match the reality of the available resource.
Control measures for Category 4 Work - Work which is inherently over-demanding
Category of Work
Category Four – A large part of the content of work is (a) inherently emotionally draining or repugnant, (b) and/or requires intense, prolonged concentration, (c) and/or has very high consequences of error, making this type of work difficult to cope with in the long term.
Examples:
Policing, Medicine, Air traffic control.
Scientific literature shows that employees in these types of work can show an excess of psychological, psychiatric or physical ill health.
Interventions to Eliminate of hazards
Not often practicable. Eliminating these hazards fundamentally alters the output requirements of this work.
It may be possible to eliminate some aspects of this work by design or the introduction of new technology – e.g.
- removing car/train level crossings thus reducing the potential for post event adverse reactions
- designing interview rooms so that the chance of an assault is minimised
- providing barriers to prevent robberies
Interventions to Isolate these Hazards
Not practicable for these occupations. Society has reserved this work for these occupations.
Interventions to Minimise these Hazards
Primary Prevention Reduce the extent of and/or impact of stressors
- Reduce the extent of stressors by ensuring regular and adequate time away from the people/stressor interface. This could include time spent on training, maintaining competencies, completing paperwork and, in some professions, sabbatical arrangements.
- Reduce the extent of stressors by ensuring limited exposure at any one time to ‘frontline’ work (e.g. rotation to non-frontline duties after x weeks/months/years exposure.
- Reducing the impact of stressors by training including pre-event training (e.g. mass disaster response training)
- Reducing the impact of stressors by ‘risk free’ peer support and review.
- Reducing the impact of stressors by working with client groups to produce joint understanding given resource limits. E.g. the general practitioner negotiates safe access and egress during ‘home visits’ to gang headquarters employees supervising disturbed adolescents discuss and negotiate expectations with parents and the community.
Secondary Prevention (Increase the goodness of fit between people and tasks by selection/training and providing support.)
- Use best practice personnel selection (don’t appoint if no one is suitable, reposition if a person proves unsuitable for the task).
- Provide adequate induction training and ongoing training
- Arrange regular audit and feedback by competent peers coupled to further training if required.
- Ensure that demands for performance do not interfere with planned, adequate, recuperative breaks.
- Ensure prompt attention to organizational impediments to optimum work practice.
- Ensure that the required outputs reflect the skills, training and job demands rather than bureaucratic requirements (don’t have Ph D’s doing the office typing)
Tertiary Prevention Alter the way people perceive and deal with (a) demands placed on them (b) the effects of these demands.
- Adequate communication between employer and employee.
- Monitoring and adjusting of workloads to match abilities
- Judicious use of leave entitlements
- ‘Stress management’
- Managing perceptions and expectations of employers, employees and clients to match the reality of the available resource.
From 'Healthy Work Managing Stress and Fatigue in the Workplace', Table 7.4 (page 59), 7.5 (page 60) and 7.6 (pages 62 and 63)
