Effects of Industrialization on Employees' Health and Stress

1. Introduction

The revolution of the industry from agro based to industrial sector is said to be industrialization (Chappelow, 2019). As the immense need of revolution in the planet, the growth of industrialization has begun from 18th-19th century. The urbanization and industrialization goes hand in hand as the growth of industrialization persuaded people to shift from rural place to urban area. Industrialization has improved the quality of human life, progressed in technologies, provided employment opportunities, increased in financial investment, given rise to productivity and so on. In a nutshell, industrialization has improved overall economy of the world (Herbst, 2004).

However, the adverse effects of industrialization win over the advantages because the impacts are trigger as well as wide spread to the environment and the creatures including human and non-human. The negative results of industrial revolution are not limited to increment in the pollution and degradation of the ecological systems, Green- house effect, ozone layer depletion, and global warming. Industrialization has directly and indirectly affected human health including general people and the employees who are the part of industrial revolution process (Berntson, 2008). Some state that the industrialization has granted employees with a wide range of opportunities and benefits like flexibility in work, welfare facilities etc. Machines are replacing the positions of low-skilled labors which provide them an opportunity to get educated for the skilled positions and add value to the economy. While others argue that, industrialization has brought upon accidental costs such as greater work intensification, partition from the relatives and family and the everyday hustle and bustle haphazardly leading employees to attract social tension, stress and poor health condition. Further, the high competition and increase in the number of skilled human resource is challenging the employability (Saunders, 2012).

Save your time!
We can take care of your essay

• Proper editing and formatting
• Free revision, title page, and bibliography
• Flexible prices and money-back guarantee

Place an order

This topic is considered to be important because many of the surveys conducted in different nations depict that almost 80% of the employees feel stressed at work which proves that the workplace stress is on the rise. Therefore, there is an extreme requirement to find out root cause for employees to suffer from stress and poor health, as well as at what scale the employees are facing these problems so that we can come up with some ideas and solutions that might be beneficial in redeeming and rectifying these problems faced by employees which might be crucial for any organization to be aware of, if it wants to have a stress-free, productive and highly motivated workforce for the better economy and healthy society (Quinlan, Mar 1, 2015). We will focus on the negative effects that industrialization has brought on employees’ health, stress and employability.

2. Research Question

The following questions will guide our study:

1. What are the major modern effects of industrialization on employees’ health?
2. What are the major factors for causing high stress and severe health issues on employees in the organizations?
3. How do employees cope up with stress and work related health issues?

3. Literature Review

It has been examined, over 40 countries for 40 years from 1970 onwards, about the workforce intensity of industrialization. According to their findings, there is a very low positive connection between industrialization and the per capita income. However, they have found no reasonable relationship among industrialization and income inequality (Sen, 2015). This examination points out on impacts of unemployment and working situations which have been under explored despite the way that this procedure is across the board in the industrialized world, is probably going to impact on affect wellbeing, and has influenced and keeps on affecting numerous laborers (Aleck S Ostry, 2001).

It has been written in the “Employment Rights In An Era Of Individualized Employment” where Anderson explains about relationship of the employment, changing surroundings, contract based employment, statutory intervention and their effects on individualized employment (Anderson, 2007). Focus has been given in this study towards the failure of the industrialization due to certain factors such as unstable government, unskilled labors, inefficiency of workers, frequent change of location (Masoom, 2015).

“Work is about a search for daily meaning as well as daily break, for recognition as well as cash, for astonishment rather than torpor, in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying” (Paul Litchfield, 2016).

It’s been stated that Clinical depression is a major workplace health issue. Employers are beginning to recognize its implications for productivity and, fortunately, there are effective treatment which lead to positive long-term results (Balducci, 2018). Stress-preventive competencies factor was related to employees wellbeing though the psychological work environment only when the latter was operationalized by means of contextual work factors (Kevin Daniels, 2017). Employees are not affected by wellbeing related to stress but Supervisor affective well-being was related to their stress-preventive competencies.

It’s been stated through his study on employees at GPHA, Taroradi that stress has very strong negative effects on productivity level of workers. Moreover, when their company neglected the issue, the dissatisfaction among the employees grew more and led to further declined productivity (Dwamena, 2012).

4. Methodology

Research design and methodology explain various procedures, instruments, methods and strategies that will be employed to collect and analyze the data in order to find out solutions to the aimed research questions.

4.1 Research plan and design

Research design is the blueprint which is shaped to obtain solutions to the research questions. Basically, we will be using descriptive research design along with several surveys on employees working in different organizations. Descriptive design has benefit of generating precise representation of features of the particular situation in an accurate and systematic manner. Research philosophy is interpretive for this research as the modern effect of industrialization on employee’s health, stress and employability should be interpreted from the data available from market and examples from the different cases. Further, secondary data that has already been published in newspaper, journal articles, and books may also guide us to accomplish our goal.

4.2 Research approach:

Deductive approach is applicable in this research. The market data and case study examples will be used to deduce the overall relationship between industrialization and employee’s health, stress and employability.

4.3 Research Strategy

The research strategy applicable in this case is the case study of Woolworths Supermarket. Woolworths has used modern technology in the business which might have several effects on employee satisfaction. Therefore, this strategy will be used by considering the specific situation and analyzing the modern effects of industrialization on employee’s satisfaction.

4.4 Sampling procedure

For this particular research project, we have selected simple random sampling. Simple random sampling is one of the most popular as well as the trendy research analysis procedure because even the complicated sampling methodologies can be derived from it. In this sampling, a small portion of sample will be taken out from a huge population size and the data taken from that sample is expected to reflect the nature of whole population.

4.5 Sampling unit

Initially, some of the companies will be randomly selected from hospitality and retail industries because they have the highest employee turnover in 2018, since the information will help us to find out the link between employee turnover and job related stress. Further, we will try to create an environment to induce an interview session with some of our classmates who are working in these fields and record their individual experience in the job.

5. TimeLine and Plan

It would be longitudinal because we need to collect data from extended period of time and the practice in organization of industrialization.

Activities Number of weeks

Wk 1 Wk2 Wk3 Wk4 Wk5 Wk6 Wk7 Wk8 Wk9 Wk10 Wk11 Wk12

Formulated a group

Generated ideas for topic selection and assigning tasks to each members

Started data collection, analysis, designing, and presented proposal to colleagues

Consulted with teacher for proper suggestions and correction

Final submission of 1st assignment

Preparing for 2nd assignment i.e. literature review by searching, reading, locating, summarizing and generating ideas.

Submitting 2nd merged assignment

Working on 3rd assignment which is research design and methodology with the help of research paradigm.

Submission of 3rd assignment

Reflective journal preparation individually.

Ensuring that every parts are in chronological order

Submission of final assignment

6. Conclusion

The crux of this research will be to address what causes employees to stress out at work, what kind of negative impacts employees will face in their health due to industrialization, employee-employer relationship after degradation on employee’s health, the responsibilities of employer to try their best to solve this issue in their workplace and ultimately the remedies that can be beneficial to not fully eradicate but minimize the problems faced by employees in their workplace. Recent study on what the stressful workplace does to an employee’s health showed that employees are prone to coronary ailments like back pain, thyroid fluctuations, hormonal imbalance, MI etc. This research is expected to be like a tip of an iceberg for the actual issues involved.

7. Reference

1. Aleck S Ostry, R. H. S. K. P. D. K. T. a. C. H., 2001. Effects of de-industrialization on unemployment, re-employment, and work conditions in a manufacturing workforce. BMC Public Healthvolume 1, Article number: 15.
2. Anderson, G., 2007. EMPLOYMENT RIGHTS IN AN ERA OF INDIVISUALIZED EMPLOYMENT. New Zealand: Research Gate.
3. Balducci, S. T. a. C., 2018. Stress-Preventive Management Competencies, Psychosocial Work Environments, and Affective Well-Being: A Multilevel, Multisource Investigation. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
4. Berntson, E., 2008. Employability perceptions: Nature, determinants, and implications for health and well-being, Stockholm: Psykologiska institutionen.
5. Chappelow, J., 2019. Economics.[Accessed 02 August 2019].
6. Dwamena, M. A., 2012. STRESS AND ITS EFFECTS ON EMPLOYEES.
7. Herbst, D. C. a. F. J., 2004. Business Research. New York: Juta Academic.
8. Kevin Daniels, D. W. a. C. G., 2017. Well-Being and the Social Environment of Work: A Systematic Review of Intervention Studies. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
9. Masoom, M., 2015. Induatrial Sickness. Pakistan: The Economic Survey of Pakistan.
10. Paul Litchfield, C. C. C. H. a. P. W., 2016. Work and Wellbeing in the 21st Century. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.
11. Quinlan, C. a. W. Z., Mar 1, 2015. Business Research Methods. s.l.:Cengage Learning.
12. Saunders, M. L. P. a. T. A., 2012. Research Methods for Business Students. s.l.:Pearson; 6 edition (2012).
13. Sen, P.-c. A. a. K., 2015. Industrialisation, Employment and Poverty. Working Papers in Trade and Development.