Organisational job design of time and performance pressure and information overload

Development and evaluation of guidelines for the selection and implementation of job design activities

Project number: F 2511 Institution: Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA) Status: Ongoing Project Planned end: 2024-08-01

Description:

Ever more employees today are working under time pressure and performance pressure, or finding themselves exposed to information overload. They often have to contend with both issues simultaneously. These stress factors pose risks to individuals’ well-being and health. It is therefore advisable to reduce the demands imposed on workers by these phenomena. However, many organisations come up against their limits when they seek to do this. There is frequently a failure to implement appropriate measures and to monitor their effectiveness.

This project will consequently develop guidelines for workplace practice on the basis of what is already known about these stress factors. The guidelines will be tested and evaluated at small and medium-sized organisations of the service and knowledge work sector that are already actively examining how they can manage time and performance pressure, and/or information overload. For this purpose, interviews will be conducted with staff who are crucially involved in job design processes, including for example managers, human resources personnel, and company doctors.

The results will be drawn on to revise the guidelines and enrich them with examples of good practice. The guidelines are subsequently to be made available to all interested organisations.