ABSTRACT
Among the most commonly cited factors contributing to workplace stress levels are job demand, job pressure, workload, work intensification, work pressure, and the like. This chapter highlights the central importance to the authors’ experience of job-related workload of the tasks they are required to perform. Task demands are a product of the amount and difficulty of work that has to be performed per unit time in relation to individual coping characteristics, including both their information-processing and physical capacities. Moving from task demands to broader job demands, they enter the domain of occupational stress, since most stress measurement scales that incorporate stressors include “job demand” as one of the potential stressors. However, with the focus on stress rather than stressors there has been comparatively little analysis or research on the particular aspects of work that are most appropriately categorized as job demands.
