Borderline

Interview schedule

• Demands

• Describe what you do for a living?
• What qualifications did you need to achieve for this job?
• What are the day to day expectations made on you? And who makes them?
• How long have you been working in this field and do you enjoy it?

• Resources

• Can you briefly describe your social setting at work? The type of interactions you need to make?

• What personality traits are important in achieving what you do?
• What resources do you have at your disposal to meet your demands? Are they enough or is more needed for you to be successful?
• Do these recourses affect your performance?

• Health Impairment Component (Strain)

• Have you experienced any health impairments working in your job?
• Any physical or mental strains that are a direct impact from the work you do?
• Have you ever felt drained or exhausted as a result of the demands made on you?

• Motivational component

• Do you enjoy your job and would you say that your job is meaningful?
• Do you receive feedback on tasks you have completed?
• What type of feedback do you receive? Do you find it helpful?
• What type of recognition do you receive when you have successfully achieved a task?  

• Outcomes:

• What part of your job would you say you enjoy the most?
• Would you say that the part you enjoy is meaningful to the demands you have to meet? How does this affect your performance?
• Do you feel that you meet your deadlines and expectations? If not what do you think is the cause?
• Does your job put any strains on your personal relationships?
• Are there meaningful relationships you need to have in order to be successful in your job?
• Where do you see yourself in five years’ time? (Promotion in the same company? In a new field or with a different organisation?)  

This essay consists of an in-depth interview with Mr X in order to identify the Job-demands and Job-resources that characterise his job. It will include a brief description of his job. A description of the job-demand resource model based upon relevant literature and research. As well as an integrated application of his job and the Job Demand Resource Model (JD-R model) including the likely outcomes that we could expect to see given the resources and demands of Mr X’s job.  ^[a]

Description of Job

Mr X is an information technology consultant who develops input schedules and reports for international and local companies in order for them to access financial consolidations and budgets within one computerised programme. Mr X has been in this field for four years. In order for him to be in this field Mr X has obtained a three year Bachelor of Commerce degree in information systems. Personal traits required for this job includes team work, making contributions to the team so therefore having social interaction skills is an important aspect to this work. Another important quality to have is patience especially when dealing with difficult and demanding clients. This line of work includes cognitive demands rather than physical as it includes travelling opportunities to different companies, so there is a constant change in the office environment away from the stability of head office.

Mr X and his co-worker receive a project plan which outlines the day to day tasks that they would need in order to complete, as a consultant his input is a time outline which states how long it will take to develop certain programmes. He answers to his project manager, all progress and questions about projects are directed to project managers, project managers are responsible for interactions with clients they will then communicate with the consultants about their projects and will also give them an overall time frame. As a consultant most interactions are with other consultants (co-workers) on the team except when they ^[b]meet with the client to explain the use of the programmes they have created.

The Job Demands and Job Resources model

The theoretical model this essay will address to interpret Mr X’s job demands and resources is called: The Job Demands and Job Resources Model (JD-R model) which was created by Arnold Bakker and Evangelia Demerouti. According to Bakker, Demerouti, de Boer,& ^[c]Schaufeli (2003,  p.344^[d]), despite where you work or what occupation you are in the traits of these environments can be classified into two general categories: job demands and job resources. This model indicates that job demands and job resources can produce two outcomes health impairment and motivation Llorens, Bakker, Schaufeli, & Salanova,(2006, p. 379) . According to Demerouti & Bakker (2011, p. 1) the model indicates how demands and resources interact and forecast organisational outcomes. By using and determining how high or low demands and resources are certain outcomes may be achieved. Individuals may experience motivation which leads to productivity or they may experience strain which leads to disengagement. The model indicates how low resources and low demands can cause low strain and low motivation, whilst high resources and low demands can lead to low strain and high motivation, low resources and high demands can lead to high strain and low motivation and high resources and high demands can lead to high strain and high motivation. Bakker & Demerouti (2007, p.317 Figure 2).

Mr X  Job Demands

Each aspect of the JD-R model will be examined and applied it Mr X’s job demands and resources. “Job Demands refers to physical, social or organisational aspects of the job that require sustained physical and/or mental effort and that are thus associated with certain physiological and psychological costs” (Llorens et al,^[e]2006, p. 379). Job demands are the aspects of the job that require sustained physical and or psychological effort and skills to be managed and can be split further, but for the purpose of this essay only three will be used. These three aspects are psychological, social and organisational. Psychological: Mr X’s job entails an enormous amount of cognitive skills that include designing and creating software programmes, there are no physical demands put on him. During^[f] the interview Mr X explains that these demands are not constant he moves from areas of enormously high demands to areas of no demands. This fluctuation indicates that the outcomes of this model will constantly be in two phases depending on whether he has demands or not. He explains that when he has “a lot of down time and not a lot of things to do so in that case it gets a bit boring.” And “when the time comes for demands it is as if a house falls on you.” (Interview Mr X^[g]). This proves that low job demands and high job resources lead to boredom for Mr X and on the other hand when he does have work to do the high job demands and high job resources lead to work engagement, high strain and high motivation. The high strain would be on a mental level. This involves highly developed cognitive skills and being able to solve problems and keep up with time frames and deadline. A physical strain he faces is the weakening of his eyesight due to long hours of sitting in front of a computer and not taking breaks. There are no programmes in place for time out sessions which leads to this strain upon the eyes. Even though he is afforded time outs as he mentions in the interview “no one is holding a gun to your head”, practicing theses good habits may prove difficult when demands are high.