Stress and strain in ‘People work’

Abstract

This study is part of a general survey study (PRIAM) with the aim of mapping the quality of the work environment and employee well being in 12 different local government social security offices. A total of 898 persons participated in the study (a response rate of 88%). The central perspective of the study is to look at work characterized by ‘people work’ and emotional worn out as an outcome and where this concept is meant to cover over traditional stress measures as well as burnout. The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between (1) demands from clients and their ‘cases’ and after that (2) to investigate if client work in itself is more demanding concerning burnout, stress and psychological strain for finally to look at (3) an assumption that variations in demands related to client work are positively associated with variations in emotional worn out. The results shows (1) that many demands are related to working with clients, however they could not support the assumption (2) that it is the very contact with the client that leads to emotional worn out but (3) that this association was found with demands connected with client work.