Work Intensification, Discretion, and the Decline in Well-being at Work

Previous studies have established that work intensification was an important feature of European labor markets during much of the 1990s [Green and McIntosh, 2001; Green, 2001; Burchell, Lapido, and Wilkinson, 2002]. In the UK, this process was the continuation of one of the processes of change at workplaces that had begun at least several years earlier during the 1980s. Following from these findings, three avenues of further research can be suggested: a continual monitoring of work intensification in British and other workplaces, an improvement in our understanding of the origins of intensification, and an investigation of the implications of intensification for workers’ well-being. This paper uses representative survey data to make contributions in all three areas. First, work intensification is, unlike economic growth, inherently a limited process. Just as an extension of the length of the working day is bounded ultimately by the number of hours in the day, so human physical and mental capacities do not allow an endless extension to effort. Thus, to understand the nature of the labor market, and the mode of economic growth at any time, it is important to monitor continually the extent of work intensification. Previous evidence showed effort rising until 1997, but a question arises as to whether this rise has continued to the present. In this paper I bring the story up to 2001. Second, evidence is only just beginning to accumulate as to the proximate origins of the work intensification that has been identified. In previous work I have suggested that technological and organizational change are probably the most important factors [Green, 2004], but there remain other related institutional changes that have facilitated or promoted work intensification to greater or lesser extents, including new human resource policies by “high-involvement” work organizations, declining unionism, and job insecurity [Burchell, Lapido, and Wilkinson, 2002]. A more thorough empirical understanding of these change processes is called for. The particular contribution I am able to make here is to assess the importance of the introduction of computerized or automated equipment into jobs in the period 1992 to 2001. Consistent with the idea that technological change is “effort-biased,” I find that computerized or automated equipment in jobs is associated with higher levels of work effort. Third, and a major focus for this paper, is the issue of whether and to what extent rising work effort may be substantively detrimental to the well-being of the workforce. There exists an abundance of evidence of links between work pressures and workplace