by Brianna Crandall — May 9, 2014—The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) recently launched a two-year, Europe-wide campaign, “Healthy Workplaces Manage Stress,” to highlight an issue that is a concern in workplaces around the world.
According to EU-OSHA, the prevalence of work-related stress in Europe is startling. The organization’s latest pan-European opinion poll revealed that 51% of workers find work-related stress to be common in their workplace, and 4 in 10 workers think that stress is not handled well in their organization.
However, EU-OSHA asserts that together, employers and workers can successfully manage and prevent work-related stress and psychosocial risks; the Healthy Workplaces campaign aims to help companies do just that. The organization and its partners called on Europe’s enterprises (both private and public) to recognize the need to tackle work-related stress, thereby protecting their workers’ health and their organizations’ productivity.
EU Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion László Andor remarked, “Managing work-related stress is one of the cornerstones in ensuring the health, safety and wellbeing of European workers. Workplaces cannot afford to ignore work-related stress, which increases absenteeism and lowers productivity. The forthcoming EU Strategic Framework on Health and Safety at Work 2014-20 will underline that better protection of workers’ mental health is a key factor to prevent work-related diseases.
“The Framework will propose a range of actions, such as sharing good practices, for promoting mental health at work. A positive working environment is not only important for enabling employees to work longer, it is also important to ensure that when workers do retire, they are still in good health. I am convinced that the new EU-OSHA campaign on stress and psychosocial risks at work will greatly contribute to this objective.”
EU-OSHA notes that despite the increasing presence and costs of workplace stress, there is still significant misunderstanding and sensitivity around how to handle the issue. In light of this fact, the Healthy Workplaces Campaign seeks to show how psychosocial risks can be handled in the same systematic way as any other occupational safety and health risk. It asserts that work-related stress is an organizational issue, and promotes the use of simple tools that can help organizations to effectively manage these risks together and highlight the positive effects of doing so.
The campaign invites all organizations and individuals at local, national and European levels to take part. It will be coordinated at the national level by EU-OSHA’s national focal points in more than 30 European countries, and supported by official campaign partners—pan-European and multinational organizations and the campaign media partners. The Healthy Workplaces Campaign is also backed by the EU Council Presidencies, the European Parliament, the European Commission, and European social partners.
The Healthy Workplaces campaign will run for two years, and will involve hundreds of organizations from across Europe through a range of activities such as training sessions, conferences and workshops, quizzes, suggestion programs, advertising campaigns, press conferences, and poster, film and photo competitions. A key activity in the campaign calendar is the European Good Practice Awards launched on April 15. Applications are encouraged from all European organizations that are successfully implementing measures to reduce and eliminate stress.
Read more in the Campaign Guide and visit the Healthy Workplaces Manage Stress campaign Web site to download all official campaign material in 25 languages and learn about campaign events happening across Europe.
