Ergonomics for Hand Screen Printing Workers: Cognitive Perception

Abstract

Hand screen printing, one among the prominent businesses in the textile sector of India lacks an ergonomic workplace and also stands behind in terms of research and development for improving the workers’ workability. Workability of a person also depends on his/her attitude toward a problem, thus a cognitive study was done among 385 workers with some key factors like stress, job satisfaction, willingness to work. Study was done to find association of the above said factors with their age, work experience, and their physique (especially weight). Descriptive analysis and repeated measures were done using SPSS v20. Results of descriptive analysis showed that, 75% of the population, who reported non-willingness fell under 1–5 years’ experience group. People with more than 10 years’ experience reported high stress (41.7%) and job satisfaction (33.3%) which was slightly less than 1–5 years’ experience group. Above results were backed up by the results of repeated measures test, as the mean of reported stress was found to be ‘high’ (CI 2.243–3.201) in the experience group of >10 years. Similar results were acquired for association with age. Major population who reported more stress and less satisfaction belonged to >40 years age group. But people who reported non-willingness to work were mostly of age 30–40 years. The mean of reported stress was almost similar for all the three (<30, 30–40, and >40 years) age groups, which gave an indication that the work environment needs an immediate alteration considering people’s stress relief. Simple modifications might be incorporated to the workplace, which might ease pressure out of workers’ head and eventually increase the workability.