What is it about?
What realities do questionnaires and surveys on stress and suffering at work bring to light? What realities do they silence? In order to answer these questions, we conducted a qualitative analysis of the questionnaire and survey report conducted by the consulting firm Technologia for France Telecom Orange, after a spate of suicides in 2008–2009.
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Why is it important?
The results show that the questionnaire constructs the individual as someone reflective yet passive, and its environment as restricted to its immediate working context. In outlining a narrow, administrative view of suffering at work, the report stigmatizes certain groups of employees and silences the employees’ voices regarding the firm’s strategy. As a consequence, the political, strategic, ideological dimensions and the economic power struggles affecting work are silenced.
Perspectives
Our research urges researchers and HR professionals to seriously question the meaning that measurement instruments of suffering, behind their apparent neutrality, convey, and discuss their underlying assumptions, interests and limitations.
Florence Allard-Poesi
Universite Paris-Est Creteil Val de Marne
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: The sound of silence: Measuring suffering at work, Human Relations, June 2017, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/0018726717703449.
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