The recent spate of employee suicides at Foxconn Technology Group in China has resulted in a media frenzy. While many experts blame the problem on overly harsh management methods, Foxconn views the suicides as isolated cases of inability to cope with pressure.
Foxconn has set up a hotline that employees can call to receive care and has also hired employee counselors. They have gone so far as to invite monks to the plant to rid the company of an evil spell. However, the company has refused to respond to comments by observers about its organization and management practices.
Media reports say Foxconn employees work long hours of overtime and are under a great deal of stress, that the work is monotonous and repetitive and that superiors are nasty toward them. This psychological pressure on employees, which has come under increased scrutiny, is an occupational health hazard that results from a style of business management and an operations system that were created in the face of globalized competition
Chinese psychologists have said that suicide rates among Foxconn employees are not especially high when compared with suicide rates in China as a whole. This, however, ignores the fact that people who can work are healthier than the general population. The only way to judge whether suicides at Foxconn are high, therefore, is to compare suicide rates there with suicide rates in other industries.
It is incorrect to calculate suicide rates while making the assumption that those who do not commit suicide are all healthy. Suicide is only one possible outcome of prolonged mental health problems. The bigger picture of occupational health involves other psychological threats, such as thinking about committing suicide, depression and anxiety.
The international community realized long ago the negative effects that poor management and operations can have on the physical and mental well-being of employees, and that this is a widespread problem across industries. This year Taiwan introduced the European Framework for Psychosocial Risk Management (PRIMA-EF).
The framework was a joint effort between the WHO and the EU. It aims to review the practical operations of businesses and uses problem-solving methods from organizational management such as “Plan-Do-Check-Action” to improve circulation. It also uses workflow management and organizational adjustments to improve work content, volume, hours worked and interpersonal relationships to minimize socio-psychological risks that may create psychological pressure for employees.
The Taiwanese government has also started to realize the seriousness of workplace stress and mental health and has followed Japan’s lead by incorporating mental illness into the scope of occupational diseases eligible for compensation. Furthermore, in November last year, the Council of Labor Affairs released a set of guidelines for judging and determining how work-related stress can cause mental illness.
The guidelines state that assessments for work-related stress should look into issues such as the amount of responsibility taken on by an individual, the amount and quality of the work, changes in the tasks performed and work ranking as well as interpersonal relationships with coworkers.
These areas are closely related to procedural design and human resources management within companies and also involve corporate social responsibility.
The recent series of suicides among lower level workers at Foxconn has highlighted the serious socio-psychological risks present in the company’s working environment and the huge gap that exists between the company’s emphasis on the value of its products and its treatment of employees.
This gap is the most likely source of the suicides. If business leaders try to blame these suicides on the emotional problems of individual employees by saying the younger generation has a lower threshold for stress, while at the same time shirking responsibility by not looking into what role management has in them, then these tragic suicides will be hard for them to stop.
We urge Foxconn head Terry Gou (郭台銘) and his management team to hire occupational health experts to respond to the challenges posed by workplace stress and the psychological problems experienced by their staff. We also hope they can focus on creating a dignified working environment, and make this one of their key corporate values.
Yeh Wan-yu is an assistant professor at the Institute of Occupational Medicine and Industrial Hygiene at National Taiwan University. Chan Chang-chuan is a professor at the Institute of Occupational Medicine and Industrial Hygiene at National Taiwan University.
TRANSLATED BY DREW CAMERON
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