Overstretched at work?

If that's you then join the 1.4 million who work for the NHS.

Indeed, according to a BBC News article just yesterday, nearly half of NHS staff feel so overstretched they fear they cannot do their jobs properly.

More edited highlights, as usual...

- 47 per cent of staff said they did not feel there were enough people to do the job, down from 51 per cent in 2007
- A third said they did not feel valued by bosses and just over a quarter had experienced work-related stress
- Half of ambulance staff had said the vehicles were not kept in a good state of repair.

For more details and a link to the actual survey the article is based on, see NHS workers 'feel overstretched'.

Working for Lidl

An article in The Guardian's G2 section yesterday took readers into the world of Lidl, one of the fastest expanding food retail outlets in the UK.

The article - Cheap - but not so cheerful? (Helen Pidd) - reveals a side of Lidl that many of its shoppers are unlikely to know about.

The spur for investigating employees experience of work at Lidl seems to be The Black Book on Lidl in Europe by Andreas Hamann und Gudrun Giese.

The book in itself is highly critical of what are seen as aggressively expanding discount businesses in Europe.

An employee's perspective is just one dimension of the book, as the following statement suggests:

"With its expansion Lidl is not only exporting the uniform design of the Lidl stores. Numerous reports of employees from packing staff to management make it clear that Lidl also wants to establish its company culture in the new markets. Mercyless work pressure, permanent shortage of staff, small wages, enormous general pressure and unfair checks, that’s what employees experience daily also abroad from Finland to Italy, from Portugal to Poland."

The findings from the article seem to confirm the findings of the book.

Compare and contrast what Lidl have to offer new employees with the article and the book here.