Psychosocial Hazards In Work Environments And Effective Approaches For Managing Them

Today’s evolving world of work makes it imperative for employers to manage psychosocial hazards (PSH) and risks leading to work-related stress. This book contains essential, general, and country-specific information and templates for the successful management of hazards to prevent psychological harm in the workplace. Acknowledged as global issues affecting all workers and industries, PSH are work factors that have the potential to lead to physical or psychological injury and stress, relating to how work is designed, organized, and managed, and to work relationships and interactions. This book advances the idea that management of PSH, and psychological health and safety, is part of the duty of care of today’s responsible and ethical employers to employees, and that U.S. employers should recognize this responsibility. Clear and easy to follow, this guide presents comprehensive information on addressing PSH, discussing measures taken internationally (laws, guidance, and resources from Europe, Canada, Mexico, Australia, and Japan), and a new global standard on psychological health and safety at work. (Note: At times within this book, and Part II in particular, punctuation may be added to quoted provisions for ease of reading and for consistency.) Practitioners and students in the fields of management, occupational health and safety, human resource management, ethics and compliance, occupational health psychology, and organizational psychology will come away with a deeper understanding of the importance of PSH and their management.

Working in a stressful environment not only increases the risk of physical illness or distress, but also increases the likelihood of workplace accidents. While legislation provides some guidelines for risk assessment of physical hazards, there remains limited guidance on the risks of psychosocial hazards, such as occupational stress. This book takes the risk management approach to stress evaluation in the workplace, offering practical guidelines for the audit, assessment and mitigation of workplace stressors. Based on research and case studies, this book provides a comprehensive source of theoretical and practical information for students and practitioners alike. It includes chapters on: * environmental stress factors * psychological stress factors * work-related accidents * job stress evaluation methods With its up-to-date approach to a fascinating area of study, this is key reading for all students of organizational psychology and those responsible for workplace safety.

Work-related stress is the second most common occupational health problem after back pain, affecting 28 per cent of workers in the EU. Given that this is often indicative of problems with the psychosocial work environment, the promotion of a preventive culture against psychosocial hazards needs to be given a high priority. This report presents 15 case studies of programmes, practices and experiences on tackling work-related stress, produced by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work in order to raise awareness of these topics in EU member states.

This book is a valuable, comprehensive and unique reference text on Psychosocial Safety Climate (PSC), a new work stress theory. It proposes a new PSC theory concerning the corporate climate for workers’ psychological health, its origins and implications for work stress, and provides a critique of current research and theories. It provides a comprehensive review of all PSC studies to date. The chapters discuss state-of-the-art empirical evidence testing PSC theory in relation to management roles, organisational resilience, corruption, organisational status, cultural perspectives, illegitimate tasks, high PSC work groups, PSC variability in work groups, etc. They investigate outcomes such as psychological distress, emotional exhaustion, depression, worry, engagement, health, cognitive decline, personal initiative, boredom, cynicism, sickness absence, and productivity loss, in various workplace settings across many countries. This unique book allows practitioners to rapidly update practical measures, benchmarks and processes, and provides students and trainees with an introduction to PSC and important concepts and methods, quantitative and qualitative, in occupational health with leads to further sources. Students as well as experts on occupational health and safety, human resource management, occupational health psychology, organisational psychology and practitioners, unions and policy makers will find this book highly informative. It covers relevant materials for undergraduate and postgraduate education, drawing upon the concepts, topics and methods (diary, multilevel, longitudinal, qualitative, data linkage) within the multidisciplinary occupational health area.

This book presents research and best practice examples from the Asia Pacific region to address the gap in global expertise on psychosocial factors at work. It explores practices in the region that promote healthy workplaces and workers by presenting research from around the globe on issues such as telework, small and medium-sized enterprises, disaster-struck areas, suicide prevention, and workplace client violence. It discusses practical, multidisciplinary efforts to address worker occupational health. Further, it explores psychosocial risk and prevention, as well as the significant role of cultural variations and practices in the diverse range of countries covered.

This book focuses on novel design and systems engineering approaches, including theories and best practices, for promoting a better integration of people and engineering systems. It covers a range of hot topics related to: development of activity-centered and user-centered systems; interface design and human-computer interaction; usability and user experience; cooperative, participatory and contextual models; emergent properties of human behavior; innovative materials in manufacturing, and many more. Particular emphasis is placed on applications in sports, healthcare, and medicine. The book, which gathers selected papers presented at the 1st International Conference on Human Systems Engineering and Design: Future Trends and Applications (IHSED 2018), held on October 25-27, 2018, at CHU-Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, France, provides researchers, practitioners and program managers with a snapshot of the state-of-the-art and current challenges in the field of human systems engineering and design.