A growing waistline is bad for your health, but now a new study says a growing business could also be bad for your health.
When a company downsizes, it often has a negative health impact on workers. Clearly, the workers are concerned about their job and their future. But new research surprisingly shows when a company expands quickly, workers also have health problems. Workplaces that expanded their number of employees by 18 percent or more were associated with increased sickness and hospital admissions. The study also found moderate expansion in the number of employees resulted in a decreased risk of hospital admissions.For the research, investigators looked at personnel changes from 1991 to 1996 in 24,000 employees. Most of the workers were healthy with a good employment record and under age 65. Researchers looked at changes in personnel, long-term sickness absence, and hospital admissions.
Researchers say their study found that a growing company does not mean high job security and a positive workplace. Actually, large and rapid expansion could lead to other problems such as difficulty in recruiting enough qualified personnel and an unstable atmosphere. Researchers say this could explain the negative health impacts of a fast expansion on the employees.
