Occupational hazards and obesity in India- a public health menaces

Abstract

There are discrete evidences coming across the country that obesity and overweight has significant relation with adverse work conditions which is further origin of many diseases. An employee with any form of ailment may not be able to contribute significantly in the productivity of companies and therefore it may affect the country economy adversely. In India, globalization has created new paradigm in organizational culture. Prolonged working hours at workplaces, work stress and sedentary lifestyle to achieve the organizational targets has become the part of the day for employees especially working in corporate sectors. By doing this study, researcher wanted to understand the organizational behavior and available facilities to identify the occupational hazards which is contributing to overweight and obesity,  which further become basis of a range of other non-communicable diseases. In this study, Researcher has tried to measure the sociodemographic, workplace related variables and heath of the workers of the multinational companies working mostly in metro cities.  Two stage sampling method was adopted to identify the samples on set inclusion criteria. A quantitative questionnaire was developed with three points Likert scale to assess the satisfaction level of employees. Findings of the study suggested that there is significant relation among the organizational behavior and available facilities with the overall wellbeing of the employees. Stress has been found significant among major percentage of employees which become basis for overweight and obesity in long run. Findings of this study will also help the policy makers, public and private organizations to revisit their organizational human resource policy and develop employee friendly organizational facilities which will further help in advancing the productivity. Since the Indian company has employee of diverse background therefore further study is also required to strengthen the findings and understand the new dimensions of  organization and workforce behavior.