Australia, just like other industrialised countries entering into the post-industrialised economy, has a well developed workforce. This is particularly attributed to its advanced technological advancements and an increasingly enormous knowledge base which has led to decline and disappearance of outdated professions, non-professional occupations seeking professional status, emergence of new professions and evolution of the existing professions characterised by a highly specialised and developed practical and theoretical knowledge practice, which isevidenced by expertproblem-solving capabilities that have been gained through extended periods of experience, education and training (Konzelmann 2007, p. 4). These has directly led organisations to change their lean and just-in-time production systems, change in task flexibility and multitasking work organisation, computerisation and automation due to the organisations’ technological changes, financial incentives to employees, employee individual evaluative systems and increased employees’ involvement due to the organisations’ change of human resource management policies, increasing overall workloads due to reduced manning levels, lack of new hires to compensate for the work-time reductions due to automation, trade union power decline, unemployment pressure and job insecurity increase due to overflow of skilled labour resulting to increased time pressures (Valeyre 2004, p. 643).

These time pressures, falling into three categories: industrial constraints, market-driven constraints and incident-driven constraints, can create a conducive economical environment for labour productivity and economic profitability (Valeyre 2004, p. 651) while on the other hand the resultant turnover, burn-over and stress can lead to negative physiological and psychological effects on the employee directly affecting the organisations’ efficient and smooth functioning and even threatening its financial viability (Burke, Singh & Fiksenbaum 2010, p. 348). These time pressures are what comprise the work intensification in the work environment.

                                                   Work Intensification                              

There are three broad categories of work intensification which are derived from their corresponding time pressures that define them. They include: industrial work intensification, market-driven work intensification and incident-driven work intensification. Industrial work intensification is mostly found in manufacturing industries where recent technological advances and organisational change have created resultant corresponding organisational and technological change forms which have directly contributed to reduced production time loss and increased work rates (Valeyre 2004, p. 643). The increased work rates and production time with lack of /inadequate hires of more labour to compensate for this high work rates coupled with more production timehas necessitated the need for the workforce to intensify their efforts to complete the workload within the specified time-frame, hence resulting to work intensification; in this context categorised under the industrial work intensification. Employees are expected by their employers to go an extra mile in the bridging the labour gap created above through overtime normalisation; which in most cases might go unpaid (Purcell 2012, p. 5).

Market-driven work intensification forms are brought about by increased demand for a given commodity or service in the market necessitating the firms’ production processes to be intensified in order to meet the demand of the product in the market (Valeyre 2004, p. 644). As it can be seen, market driven form of work intensification is a hybrid of the forces of market demand and the industrial form of work intensification earlier explored; as the market forces of demand for a given product forces a firm to intensify its internal production (industrial) processes in order to meet the market demand. This calls for urgent formulation of high commitment policies by the management to tap employee involvement and cater for the resultant employees’ incentives (Green 2002, p. 28).

Incident driven form of work intensification is mostly found in process industries (where automation activities are prevalent and capital intensive machineries’ reliability is of utmost importance) whereby they are triggered by the necessity to respond in real time to technical problems and incidents such as; machine missing parts, faults, breakdowns among others in order to revert the machines’ operational capability to the normal (Valeyre 2004, p. 644).

Both the market-driven and incident-driven forms of work intensification are brought about through the firms’ need for effective competiveness, production efficiency and economic profitability whilst industrial form of work intensification springs out of the firms’ desire to minimise the production time (Valeyre 2004, p. 644). Combining these principles behind work intensification leads to two main objectives that work intensificationstrives for: To achieve labour productivity and economic profitability.

Most researches carried out in the recent past, mostly portraying work intensification as beneficial to both the firm and the employees and disguising it as High performance Work Practices (HPWPs), have found out that; it can increase labour productivity and gains, it can increase both the firms’ and the employees’ economic profitability (mostly through paid overtimes), it can lead to low staff turnover, it can enhance skills, training and better teamwork and it can bring about employees’ high earnings and an enhanced staff commitment (Sparham & Sung N.d, p. 2 ). Kossek, Lewis and Hammer (2010) while quoting Clare Kelliher and Deidre Anderson (N.d) argue that work intensification, from a qualitative analysis research, has a greater access and control to employees’ flexible working arrangements and offers an employee a high quality of life when strategically traded off with an aim of managing career-life tensions. Valeyre (2004) in his research establishes that work intensification leads to increased labour profitability in manufacturing industries (with an exception of process industries that falls under manufacturing industries) and increased economic profitability.

However, regardless of the bright side of work intensification which seems to incline towards the employers’ side, more recent researches increasingly conclude that all is not well; especially on the employees’ side.The employees’ benefits explored above (that comes out of work intensification) are outweighed with employees’ increased workload, responsibilities, work stress and office/work place to work-at-home work spill-over (Sparham & Sung N.d, p. 3). This affects the employees’ psychological and physiological wellbeing resulting to disruption of the normal functioning of the organisation (Burke, Singh & Fiksenbaum 2010, p. 348). Allan (N.d) on the other hand finds out from his research that (hospital) workers’ wellbeing and health significant deterioration is due to work intensification. Work intensification has also been associated with low enthusiasm and contentment at work, which are the two main happiness measurements parameters in the workplace (Research Briefing 2012, p. 2). Reproductive dysfunction (evidenced by spontaneous abortion), musculoskeletal stress, finger pain, eye fatigue, respiratory ailments (such as asthma), lack of proper social interaction, work-related accidents and even development of work-related mental illness were some of the effects of work intensification for women in the work-force (Lu 2009, p. 118).

It is evident from the above analysis that work intensification is closely related to the employee’s well being. Green (2006) associates an increased work effort to the decline in the employees’ well being whereby increased work effort and long working hours are very detrimental to the general well-being of the employee. On the other hand, handling heavy workloads and processing large amounts of information (which in themselves are forms of work intensification) leads to employees having a sense of insecurity, high work-related emotional demands and finally leads to conflicts between employees’ private lives and the demands of work (Guthrie, Ciccarelli & Babic 2010, p. 104).

In general, the negative effects of work intensification can be classified into two broad groups: those directly affecting the employee in person (good examples are those touching on his/her health and wellbeing) and those that impacts on the employees’ environment, in the process indirectly affecting him/her.

Although the principles responsible for the occurrence of work intensification in the workplace springs out of the organisations’ desire for effective competitiveness, production efficiency, economic profitability and the need for production time minimization, there are some other negative effects that springs up in the process as explored above. In order to deal effectively with these negative effects, it is recommended first of all to tackle those issues that provide an enabling environment for work intensification to thrive.The implementation of new technologies in the workplace must take into account the pace at which humans can perform those tasks, an increase in the work rate and reduced production speed must be countered with an equal rate of workforce hire to compensate for the increased labour, the organisational change of policies must involve employee participation in their formulations, putting up the mechanism to enable employee job security and better working conditions better achieved through combined bargaining power through revival of trade unions and involvement of the state in the employee relations affairs to provide the appropriate enactment and government employee protection.

Conclusion

Work intensification is majorly brought about by changes in work-related technological advancements and application, change in the organisational structure and policies touching on human resource management, and the resultant work rate increase among others like trade union power decline. Industrial form of work intensification, market-driven form of work intensification and incident-driven form of work intensification are the three main forms of work intensification. The positive effects of work intensification are; increased labour productivity and increased economic profitability. On the other hand, the following are the major negative effects of work intensification: increased workload, increased responsibilities, work stress and work-at-home spill-over that result to; reduced psychological and physiological well being.

References

Allan, C N.d,Work Intensification: A Lacuna in the Labour Utilisation Literature

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Guthrie, R, Ciccarelli, M& Babic, A 2010. Work-related stress in Australia: The effects of legislative interventions and the costof treatment, International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 33 (2010) 101–115

Purcell, J 2012. The limits and possibilities of employee engagement, Warwick Papers in Industrial Relations, Number 96, Industrial Relations Research Unit University of Warwick Coventry

Lu, JL 2009, ‘Effect of Work Intensification and Work Extensificationon Women’s Health in the Globalised Labour Market’, Journal of International Women’s Studies Vol. 10 No. 4

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Kossek, EE, Lewis, S and Hammer, LB 2010. ‘Work–life initiatives and organizational change: Overcoming mixed messages to move from the margin to the mainstream’, Human Relations Journal 63(1) 3–19

Research Briefing 2012.Work intensification, insecurity and well-being in Britain’s workplaces: recent trends, Institute of Education, University of London

Valeyre, A 2004. ‘Forms of Work Intensification and Economic Performance in French Manufacturing’, Eastern Economic Journal, Vol. 30, No. 4

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