Job demands

What are job demands?

Review the examples of common job demands (high and low) that can negatively impact your workers psychological and physical health.

Time

• Unrealistic timeframes or time pressures
• Long work hours or shift work

Cognitive

• Highly repetitive or monotonous tasks (low)
• Long periods of vigilance for infrequent events (high)
• Complex or challenging decision making (high)
• Low role clarity (high)

Workload

• Long periods of insufficient work (low)
• Unrealistic or unachievable amounts of work (high)

Physical

• Sitting or standing for long periods
• Unpleasant or hazardous conditions (for example, hazardous chemicals or dangerous equipment)

Environmental

• Remote and isolated work
• Poor environmental conditions (for example, extreme temperatures or noise, air quality)

Impact of job demands

On workers

• Depression
• Anxiety
• Fatigue
• Burnout
• Anger or mood swings
• Problems sleeping
• Diminished performance
• Disengaged or withdrawn from work.

On organisations

• Poor workplace culture
• Negative or strained work-team relations and team dynamics
• Increased worker injury and illness
• Reduced productivity
• Higher employee turnover
• Increased absenteeism
• Complaints from customers or clients.

Risk factors for job demands

Risk factors cover two categories:

How the work is organised (Context)

• Organisational function and culture
• Leadership
• Organisational change management
• Interpersonal relationships at work
• Role in organisation
• Career development
• Decision latitude and control
• Resource allocation.

What the job involves (Content)

• Work environment and equipment
• Task design
• Workload
• Work schedules
• Worker skills, capabilities and training.

How to manage the risks of job demands

Employers should take a systematic approach to managing psychosocial risks and promoting worker psychological health and safety, including preventing harm, intervening early and supporting recovery.

Prevent harm

• Identify work-related hazards and risks.
• Consult with workers and their representatives and encourage feedback.
• Assess risks and implement effective control measures.
• Ensure there is good work design and safe systems of work.
• Provide workers with the training, information and supervision they need to do their job safely and well.
• Maintain, monitor and review control measures and revise if necessary.

Intervene early

• If a review shows control measures are not effective, take action to identify and implement additional controls.
• Support workers showing signs of work-related stress by modifying their work and giving them access to counselling and extra workplace support.
• Provide early assistance for those with an increased risk of injury.

Support recovery

• Provide early assistance and support to access treatment and rehabilitation services, generally from the time a claim is lodged.
• Support timely and sustainable recovery at work (RAW) or return to work (RTW) through effective consultation, addressing any remaining work-related hazards and risks that may exacerbate the existing work-related psychological injury or cause a new injury.

How to control job demands

Time demands

• Ensure staffing levels align with expected outputs and workers have enough time to complete tasks.
• Give workers the opportunity to provide input into work pace and timing.
• Set realistic and achievable targets.
• Monitor workloads during peak periods, such as Christmas holiday season.
• Regularly review workloads to ensure workers have sufficient support.
• Encourage workers to speak up at an early stage if they feel their workload is excessive.

Cognitive or emotional demands

• Rotate tasks and schedules where possible to provide job variety, and to lessen the impact of repetitive and monotonous tasks.
• Provide training to leaders to ensure they are competent and confident to have conversations about mental health and wellbeing, and work-related risks.
• Give workers some control over the way they do their work, including work pace and order of tasks.
• Have support systems in place for workers that make complex or difficult decisions, for example, a second person to assist.
• Provide training and ongoing support to workers on how to diffuse difficult or confronting situations.

Physical demands

• Allow regular breaks and rotate repetitive manual tasks between employees where possible.
• Make the physical environment as comfortable as possible, such as changes to the workstation, equipment, or the way the job is done.
• Substitute heavy manual tasks with machinery to reduce physical workloads where practicable.
• Ensure workers are well trained and physically capable of doing the work.

Resources on job demands

• Managing work demands checklist (PDF, 279.7 KB) is a starting point for employers, managers, supervisors, and workers to prevent and manage the risks of job demands.
• Practical guidance for Employers: Work demands set the standard (PDF, 4.5 MB) will help you understand and identify work-related stress, then proactively eliminate, reduce, and manage the risks to prevent harm to workers.
• Practical guidance for Managers and Supervisors: Work demands set the standard (PDF, 3.5 MB) will help supervisors understand and identify work-related stress, then take action to eliminate, reduce, and manage the risks to prevent harm to workers.
• Practical guidance for Workers: Work demands set the standard (PDF, 4.0 MB) will help workers understand work-related stress so they can report early issues and concerns and identify how harm can be prevented.

More information 

• SafeWork NSW Work demands and work-related stress tip sheet

Training on psychological health and safety