The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (OSHA), is the European technical agency promoting a culture of risk prevention to ensure safer, healthier and more productive workplaces in Europe. As part of OSHA, the European Risk Observatory (ERO) provides information on safety and health at work in Europe, describes trends, anticipates changes in work and forecasts consequences for safety and health.
ERO’s latest findings are that work-related stress represents one of the biggest health and safety challenges and affects 22% of workers from EU27.
Stress is caused by a mismatch between people and their work, which can be the result of poor work relationships or the presence of psychological or physical violence in the working environment or by conflicts between roles at work and in the household.
The introduction of new technologies and work processes has increased the demand of flexibility in terms of job insecurity, work intensification, high emotional demands, violence at work and poor work-life balance. Consequently, the number of people suffering from stress-related conditions is likely to increase. Data show that:
in some EU countries as many as 10-17 % of workers reported were victims of harassment at work
the problem of violence is high in the healthcare and service sectors
over 40 % of employees from the EU27 who worked long hours reported being dissatisfied with the balance between work and family life
cost-effectiveness of work-related stress in the EU15 was estimated at € 20.000 million.
Stress has a detrimental impact on people’s health when it is protracted over time. Monitoring and improving psychological work environments are necessary measures that need to be addressed from different policy actors (i.e. government, organisation and individual level) to ensure equity and create quality jobs that retain workers in good conditions.
For further information
OSHA website
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