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Today's Supermarket Green Analysis
10/10/2007
Heart disease study means job stress is an environmental factor retailers should consider
Today the Journal of the American Medicine Association published a study detailing the effects of job stress on the frequency of chronic heart disease. According to JAMA "a job is characterized as stressful when it is high in psychological demand and low in personal control."
Demand is all about work-pace, which is typically very intense in the retail industry. Control JAMA defines as the combination of authority over decisions and opportunities to develop personal skills.
The JAMA study assessed 972 subjects, between 35 and 59 years of age, who returned to work after experiencing a first MI and were followed for nearly 10 years. Job strain was determined based on interviews at the first return to work, 2 years after return and at six years.
206 patients experienced the composite outcome of fatal CHD, nonfatal heart attack, or unstable angina. The study indicates a two year minimum lag between job stress and related heart disease. Chronic job strain was associated with a 2.2-fold increased risk of recurrent events beginning in the third year.
CHD events for subjects with chronic strain were 6.18 per 100 persons per year and 2.81 for those without chronic job strain.
SMGN suggests retailers take the journal's findings seriously by working to reduce workplace stress. While an intense pace is not anything businesses would want to change, the control factor is one managers might have control over. By increasing the degree to which employees take part in the decision making process and by providing more opportunities for advancement, the larger costs of higher medical claims can be quantified against increased labor costs.
Employers can use common sense to reduce job stress simply be being friendlier to their employees. Managers should be made aware that punctuality, productivity, and good decision making can be treated as goals for which rewards can be offered, rather than as negative measures of worth which can result in disciplinary action leading to termination. Employees who feel appreciated for the work that they do, rather than defined by their failures are freed from the costly stress the journal describes.
Owners should find ways to measure the level of stress that exists in their stores. A culture of fear is almost always one of paralyzing stress from the top down. If managers are too fearful to be honest about problems with executives they are likely to release their own anxieties on those under their authority.
Article by James Carvin
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