Background: The Swedish Royal School of Technology (KTH) was hired to conduct a pilot study project on stress prevention, "Stress Prevention Project" in a Swedish high-tech global manufacturing company with headquarters in Sweden. The aim was to identify the root causes of stress among employees at the organizational level and to offer a way to prevent the root causes. The initiative to implement the project came from the HR department in the company. The occupational health department had not been able to lower the costs of sickness and rehabilitation. One of nine divisions was included in this evaluation study. The project was carried out during the years of 2012-2014, and three quantitative stress measurements were carried out using the modern working environment form “Modern Work Life” based of knowledge from KTH and designed by Metodicum. The present study has evaluated the root causes of the division's stress. In the division, it was stated that the risk areas that the division had to work with were: resources, demands, control, support but also leadership and reorganization with implementing the Agile methods (autonomous work) in the form of. The aim was to improve the psychosocial occupational health and to make the production work more efficient. Aim: The aim was to evaluate the effect of stress preventive measures in one of the nine divisions (that were included in the overall project) and the effect of implementing the Agile methods (autonomous work) in the organization. Limitations: The evaluation is restricted to one of the nine divisions. Method: The method is a quantitative and qualitative case study, with a narrative approach. The study includes a division with 200 employees of which data was collected from 18 of these employees in two focus groups interviews. Materials have also been collected from interviews with the division's HR director, section leader, head of unit and head of the organization's business health. The evaluation is based on qualitative data, which were obtained through 3 single interviews and 4 focus group interviews and participant observation. Quantitative data were obtained through three different measurements (between 2012-14). The quantitative data were compared and analyzed with the qualitative data in order to understand the results up to the final measurement 3 (2014). Results: The evaluation of the stress prevention – where the focus was to prevent risk areas including demands, develop resources, control, support and also leadership – showed that introducing and using the Agile working principles had had a significant positive effect on all the risk areas. Additionally, this change in the organization contributed to positive results regarding the efficiency of the production process; a reduction of working hours from 12 months to 2 weeks of action at the same result. The absence due to illness and rehabilitation has been decreasing from 4 % to 0,5-1% right after introducing the Agile methods in the division. However, the results also showed no improvement regarding some other working environment; as conflicts and bullying persisted. This may be due to how the reorganization of the groups was done. It should be clarified that the outcomes may be influenced by the extensive reorganization that took place in connection with the stress prevention project and the introduction of the agile approach. Conclusions - The stress prevention could not have been done efficiently due to other on-going reorganizations in the company and the staff has not been able to follow the recommendation for efficient stress-prevention due to lack of support from the headquarter. That created a crisis in the stress prevention-project group. The agile methods seem to have had a significant good result in all risk areas as resources, demands, control, support and also leadership and the absence has decreased from 4 to 0,5 %. Due to the agile methods have the productions process been shorter from 12 months to 2 weeks.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:kth-224666 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Fritz, Minanda |
| Publisher | KTH, Ergonomi |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | Swedish |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
| Relation | Arbete och Hälsa, |
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