Work and Psychological Suffering: A Case Study on Customer Service Employees at an Electrical Services Company



Fig. 24.1
Job satisfaction (Source: based on own data)



With regard to loyalty to the organization, we could say it is very high. An indicator that gives us this impression is that 88.5% feel proud to work at this company. To this we could add the proactive attitude of workers; 80.8% consider that they overcome difficulties encountered in working hours, and 53.9% say that at the face of difficulties, they can maintain the pace of work.

With regard to attention to working conditions and environment, we agree with the concept characterized by Neffa [14] as “constituted by the socio-technical and organizational production process implemented in the establishment (working conditions) and by the risk factors of the working environment”. The percentage of those who think that the company cares about this is 46.2%.; 15.4% of them raised the existence of physical contaminants, and 26.9% feel that the work makes psychological demands, both physically and psychologically causing ailments and discomfort (Fig. 24.2).

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Fig. 24.2
Working conditions and environment (Source: based on own data)

The same author also raises the concept of “workload”, referring to both the mental and the psychological burden. Neffa defines mental burden or mental workload as “the requirements and demands of the job in terms of cognitive activities (…). It depends on the one hand, on the structure and functioning of cognition processes and on the other hand, on the nature, amount, and frequency of the information to be perceived, captured, and processed in a given unit of time” [14]. On the other hand, he characterizes the psychological load or psycho-social aspects of workload as very closely related to the actual content of the job.

With regard to the findings related to these two forms of workload, 19.2% of respondents think that work produces mental disorders, 26.9% believe that work causes psychological discomfort, and 26.9% declare that they suffer psychological fatigue attributable to the complexity of the task. With smaller but no less significant values, 11.5% of workers think that the knowledge required for the job affects their mental health, and 7.6% believe that the knowledge required for the tasks exceeds them (Fig. 24.3).

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Fig. 24.3
Workload and pyschological suffering (Source: based on own data)

This, in some cases, results in somatization. This can be considered as belonging to the field of psychological suffering, namely headache during working hours (23% of respondents), feelings of oppression or “my head is about to explode” (19.2%), sleep disorders (30.8%), permanent fatigue (19.2%), and nerves or moodiness (11.5%) (Fig. 24.4).

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Fig. 24.4
Somatization (Source: based on own data)

In some cases, this psychological suffering leads to psychological disorders; 3.8% of respondents expressed having felt overwhelmed or panic for no reason and another 7.6% reported having felt that the world was coming down, affecting both their relationships with couples and children.

A small number of workers (19.2%) directly attributed their psychological ailments to being in the area of customer service. However, 50% of respondents said that there are certain discomforts from working in customer service, but that they are not incessant.

Within the data referred to psychological suffering, it is interesting to note that women have higher percentages in questions regarding discomfort produced by work (14.3% women and 8.3% men) (Fig. 24.5). Most of the women (57.1%) argued that they felt emotionally exhausted by the task, a value that in men was only 25%. It also highlights that 14.3% of women reported feeling treated as an object in their workplace, unlike the men, all of whom responded negatively to this question.

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Fig. 24.5
Discomfort produced by work (Source: based on own data)

Other interesting differences found in relation to the gender of respondents refer to the defense mechanisms brought into play to cope with psychological suffering: since performing this tasks, 33.3% of men feel that they have become less sensitive, while only 14.3% of women feel this way (Fig. 24.6) although, curiously, it is women in greater proportion (50%) who feel the transfer of problems from users to themselves, while this was found only in 27.3% of men.

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Fig. 24.6
Sensitivity and insensitivity

It is also interesting to note that there is a greater psychological burden and greater involvement as a result of the task in men than in women: 33.4% of men believe that labor produces psychological disorders, and only 7.1% of women agreed (Fig. 24.7). On the other hand, 41.7% of men and 14.2% of women believe that the job causes psychological discomfort; and finally, 33.4% of men and 21.4% of women feel that the complexity of the task gives them psychological fatigue.
Oct 20, 2017 | Posted by in PSYCHIATRY | Comments Off on Work and Psychological Suffering: A Case Study on Customer Service Employees at an Electrical Services Company

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