Company Growth May Be
Bad for Employees' Health

Everyone worries about downsizing, but new study findings suggest that too much hiring can also cause problems for employees.

Swedish investigators found that employees of workplaces undergoing a prolonged period of rapid expansion, increasing staff by at least 18 percent per year, were slightly more likely to be admitted to the hospital or to take a sick leave of at least 90 days.

The effect of a rapidly expanding workforce on health was most pronounced among women working in the public sector, Swedish investigators report in The Lancet.

"Repeated exposure to very large expansion is related to negative health outcomes," said study author Dr. Hugo Westerlund. "And that's somewhat surprising."

In an interview with Reuters Health, Westerlund suggested that expanding workplaces may hurt workers if work load increases faster than bosses can hire new people, leaving existing employees to take on more than their normal share of work.

Additionally, he noted that expanding workplaces may display an "organizational instability," in which much is in flux and people don't know how the now-bigger workplace works. This could also increase stress among workers, affecting their health, said the researcher, who is based at the National Institute for Psychosocial Medicine in Falkoping.

As part of the study, Westerlund and his colleagues reviewed the employment records of 24,036 Swedish workers from 1991 to 1996, noting who worked at sites that experienced a rapid expansion, and how many people took long sick leaves or were hospitalized.

The investigators found that employees who experienced repeated bouts of large expansions were 7 percent more likely to take a long sick leave and 9 percent more likely to be hospitalized than people who didn't experience a big round of hiring.

Women working in the public sector whose workforces were rapidly expanding over the entire study period were almost 3 times as likely as those with no exposure to these workforce changes to be hospitalized or develop a long illness.

Interestingly, moderate expansion--increasing workforce by between 8 and 18 percent per year--was associated with a decreased risk of being hospitalized. Moderate expansion may help employees by making them feel they are part of a "positive climate of a healthy, growing organization," according to Westerlund.

Westerlund noted that organizations can protect their workforce during rapid expansions by involving people in the changes, to prevent them from feeling out of control.

Additionally, companies might consider taking a break in between big bouts of reorganization to let employees settle into the new structure, or link up with doctors or psychologists who treat many people at the same office and can therefore predict which employees might be most at risk during expansion, he added.

Reference Source 89

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