The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) launched a two-year Europe-wide campaign, ‘Healthy workplaces manage stress’.

The prevalence of work-related stress in Europe is startling. EU-OSHA’s latest pan-European opinion poll revealed that just over half of workers find work-related stress to be common in their workplace and four in 10 workers think that stress is not handled well in their organisation.

The thrust of the campaign is that employers and workers can successfully manage and prevent work-related stress and psychosocial risks by working together.

EU Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, László Andor said: “Workplaces cannot afford to ignore work-related stress, which increases absenteeism and lowers productivity.”

The recently presented EU Strategic Framework on Health and Safety at work 2014-20 underlines that better protection of workers’ mental health is a key factor in preventing work-related diseases.

“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,” Andor continued.

An EU-OSHA survey found that over 40 per cent of employers consider psychosocial risks more difficult to manage than traditional occupational safety and health risks. The Healthy Workplaces Campaign seeks to show that these psychosocial risks can be handled in the same systematic way as any other occupational safety and health risk.

The campaign will involve hundreds of organisations in a range of activities such as training sessions, conferences and workshops, poster, film and photo competitions, quizzes, suggestion schemes, advertising campaigns and press conferences.

The contact point for the campaign in Malta is the Occupational Health and Safety Authority.

http://osha.europa.eu