Mental Stress and Fatigue in Retailing Company

Running head: MENTAL STRESS AND FATIGUE IN RETAILING COMPANY
MENTAL STRESS AND FATIGUE IN RETAILING COMPANY
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MENTAL STRESS AND FATIGUE IN RETAILING COMPANY
Introduction:
Occupational illness can be defined as the condition that might result from exposure in a
workplace from various types of factors that may be physical, chemical as well as biological
agents. These agents are seen to affect the physiological mechanisms of the body that results in
affecting the health of the person and resulting in poor quality life (Montano et al., 2017).
Present day generation is putting huge significance on the maintenance of health and safety in
workplace. Maintaining health and safety of the employees is important and laws, policies and
other initiatives need to be enacted to protect the well-being of the employees, visitors as well as
customers (Toussiant et al., 2016). Researchers are of the opinion that looking after Health and
Safety good business sense. Workplaces that neglect or avoid the health and safety risk
prosecution are mainly seen to lose staff and thereby increase costs reducing profitability.
Different types of occupational health hazards are mainly seen to affect the workers. Physical,
chemical, biological, mechanical as well as psychosocial factors affect health of the employees
(Moen et al., 2015). This assignment will mainly highlight one of the most important
psychosocial hazard that most of the people in the nation of Australia are facing in their
workplace and will thereby show how a proper health promotional plan will help to mitigate its
negative effects.
Retail organizations have one of the most important objective of strengthening economic
performance overcoming the several barriers of the given pressures from globalization, increase
of internet and social media competition and thereby decreasing in the consumer spending which
is mainly resulting from the global financial crisis. The retail sector is one of the major
employers in the developed nations. In the nation of Australia, about 10% of the workforce
accounting for about 1.2 million people is found to be employed in the retail sector.

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MENTAL STRESS AND FATIGUE IN RETAILING COMPANY
CarryCart.com is one of the most renowned internets retailing organization that is serving to near
about every home in the nation of Australia (Schonfield et al., 2016). The consumers are seen to
but different types or products starting from fresh vegetables and fruits to that of different clothes
and apparels as well. However, the organization has developed one cost cutting strategy in
response to the pressure of global financial crisis and increasing profitability is downsizing the
workforce who is working together in each of the segments of the retaining organization. This
rationalization process mainly results in creation of the instability as well as highly competitive
retail work environment that becomes very stressful for the employees as well as other associated
with poor psychological health and well being. A huge pressure of work which was previously
shared with more number of employees are now shared with very few employees with the
pressure on each one increasing as the same previous burden of work which was previously
shared by many are now shared by very few. Poor psychological health as well as wellbeing is
affecting the organizational outcomes like reduced productivity and increased absenteeism. The
workers are 60% male and 40% females and are mostly seen to be young adults ranging from the
age of 28 to about 45 years mostly with very few workers beyond working of the age 45 years.
The workplace is comfortable with proper arrangements of seating positions and availability of
important resources needed to complete the work but the working environment is quite strict.
The working hours is quite long quite long for about 10 hours which most of the employees have
to stretch as they cannot complete the work within the timeframe. Most of them have to take
back their work to home resulting in affecting work life balance. The organizational culture is
quite strict and hardly any of the members get time to engage with each other in informal talks or
other discussions except work. Therefore, severe mental stress as well fatigue occurs among the
employees resulting in poor quality life and loss of metal stability and physical disorders.

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MENTAL STRESS AND FATIGUE IN RETAILING COMPANY
On detailed analysis, a number of factors had been identified that were contributing to the
development of mental stress and fatigue among the members working in the organization. The
first factor that was recognized was the job as well as task demands. The employees were seen to
be suffering from work overload. There was also lack of task control and many of the members
stated that there was a lack of role ambiguity as well. As they had reduced the number of
employees, a huge burden of work was put on each of the members. Many members had to work
in roles that are different from what their designations dictate. Moreover, the second factor that
was noted was that the organization also did not take any initiatives to help the professionals.
Poor interpersonal relations as well as unfair management practices are seen to be two of other
organizational factors that result in development of stress among the employees. Huge pressure
also resulted from conflicts between the work as well as family roles and responsibilities and
these resulted in affecting mental stability and created issues in personal relationships (Nelson &
smith, 2016). These were other sources of mental stress among the members. As the organization
was more involved in making the employees produce more productivity, they did not provide
enough significance on the training of the individuals and there were lack of career development
opportunities. These actually resulted in lack of opportunity for growth as well as promotion and
hence it resulted in development of stress among the members, as they could not satisfy their
ambitions. Moreover, a close analysis also revealed a number of important factors. These were
the poor organizational climate. There was a complete lack of management commitment to
different of the core values and most of the higher authorities were seen to change their versions
depending upon the necessity of the situations. Conflicting communication styles were seen to be
one of the most important reasons that resulted in development of miscommunication among the