Defining Work Intensification through Profession-Specific Job Demands

Work-related stress has escalated progressively over the past few decades that affects both health and wellbeing of the employee and productivity of the organisation. Work-related stress has become one of the most common compensated illness in many countries around the world. Therefore, there is a growing international research interest to identify how employees experience stress and specific job-related triggers of stress, which in turn helps to create employee friendly policies and conducive organizational cultures. In working environments several job characteristics have been suggested to influence workers’ well-being and functioning negatively. Job demands-resource literature suggests that these job demands may lead to job burnout and health impairment process of employees. A significant body of literature is available on work-related stress, job demands and burnout. However, there is limited research on occupation-specific job demands and its effects. This study explores job demands and its effects on judicial officers in Sri Lanka. Qualitative methodology was deployed, and fifty-four semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted with judicial officers in Sri Lanka. Key findings included judges in Sri Lanka experienced excessive job stress stemming from profession-specific job demands such as judicial overload, political influence, and interpersonal conflict between lawyers and judges, social isolation and influence of gruesome evidence.