Job insecurity associated with depression
Thinking you are on the way out?
I recently came across yet another study confirming the aversive effects of enduring job insecurity on staff. This recent longitudinal study found an association between job insecurity and the use of antidepressants, suggesting that job insecurity is related to depression. This was even more so if the participants had a previous history of job loss. In other words, the fear of losing your job will make you sick! Another study confirming the negative health effects associated with job insecurity can be found here.
If you are managing people you can imagine what debilitating effects this can have on your staff’s performance. Whereas not necessarily a paradox, it is a concern that in the age where the “job for life” concept is long gone the lack of job security has potentially even greater averse effects than ever before on an organisation’s business performance. This is especially so seeing how dependent businesses now are on people processes compared to tangible resources such as materials and machinery.
So what can we learn from studies like these? One potential learning point would be that it is not necessarily working in a stressful environment that can lead to burn out related symptoms, but rather the fear of losing your job! Rather than worrying about whether they give employees too many things to do (some unions would argue that this is not happening in the first place), employers might want to spend more time looking at increasing levels of transparency in their structures and processes such as communication.
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Hi,
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