Synthesis of Universal Workplace Design in Assembly-A Case Study

To form an inclusive and sustainable society, workplace design that can be used by different individuals, regardless of sex, language, background, and body function variations is needed. Such workplaces can also give economic benefits to companies if they provide a more accessible, safer, more productive and error proofed working environment. This aim of this paper is to evaluate a universal design concept developed at a company aiming at providing an \u27easy job\u27-workplace design for manual industrial operations. The study investigated key factors from 8 interviews and compared it to theoretical constructs such as WHO\u27s ICIDH-2. A synthesis was formed that included the following factors: personal factors, environmental factors and outcomes of universal work. The study has resulted in new insights regarding universal workplace design and the vision is that the synthesis can be used by other production companies that want to increase the universal design in assembly work

Female leaders' experiences of psychosocial working conditions and its health consequences in Swedish public human service organizations

Municipal workplaces have high levels of sickness absence, and deterioration of the psychosocial work environment has been most pronounced for women and employees in this sector of Swedish working life. This study explores how female leaders in one rural municipality in Sweden experience their psychosocial working conditions and its health consequences. Interviews were carried out with 20 female leaders. Data were analyzed with a content analysis method using major dimensions of work stress models. These were job demands, job control, job resources, social support, and its health consequences. The analysis shows that the leaders experience high and conflicting job demands, limited possibilities to influence their work situation, insufficient job resources and social support, and limited time for their own health promotion. However, the leaders experience possibilities to develop skills in their jobs and opportunities to participate in educational programs. The analyses confirm the need for improvements in the prerequisites for female leaders in public human service organizations. It is important to improve female leaders' psychosocial working conditions by implementing a more narrow control range, increased personal and economical recourses, leadership support, and leader development programs.Published: 1 March 2013</p