Psychosocial risks: Work-related stress, burnout syndrome, mobbing, sexual harassment, and physical violence are some forms in which these work-related disorders can manifest, affecting the psychological integrity of workers.
Written by Josep Conesa
Labor and bankruptcy lawyer
WORK-RELATED STRESS
This encompasses a set of emotional, cognitive, physiological, and behavioral reactions to certain adverse or harmful aspects of the content, environment, or organization of work. Regardless of the psychosocial risks affecting the company, some individuals are more susceptible to stress due to their personality patterns. It is important to identify such workers to prevent surrounding circumstances from leading to a decline in their performance. Stress is perceived as an imbalance between the personal and organizational resources available to a person and the demands of the situation. For a worker to be considered stressed, their disorder must be linked to a risk; be it the perceived risk of the situation, a suffered harm, or even an imposed challenge.
BURNOUT
Burnout is the response to chronic work-related stress, characterized by negative attitudes and feelings towards the people one works with and towards one’s professional role. A primary symptom in workers suffering from this disorder is a state of emotional exhaustion. The term for this pathology, a consequence of psychosocial risks, comes from the aerospace industry and refers to a rocket's fuel exhaustion. When this happens, the rocket's machinery overheats excessively, leading to its destruction. Applied to humans, it refers to workers feeling subjected to too much pressure, causing them to despise their job and become hypersensitive to external factors.
MOBBING
Psychological harassment, moral harassment, or mobbing is the most popular among the so-called psychosocial risks. It is one of the main reasons leading a worker to work-related stress situations and is characterized by originating from interpersonal relationships established among different members of the company, without a direct connection to work performance.
SEXUAL HARASSMENT
This is behavior of a sexual nature that affects the dignity of both women and men at work. We can differentiate between two types of sexual harassment: on the one hand, sexual blackmail, and on the other, harassment that creates a hostile, humiliating, or threatening work environment for the harassed person. It is also one of the psychosocial risks.
PHYSICAL VIOLENCE
Physical violence at work encompasses more than mere aggression; it includes threatening, intimidating, abusive, and harassing verbal or physical behaviors related to causing immediate bodily harm.
PREVENTIVE MEASURES
All these symptoms have a clear impact on the personal performance of workers. Therefore, knowing how to avoid certain situations will be a great advantage for companies implementing preventive policies. The Occupational Risk Prevention Law establishes that the employer is obliged to adapt the work to the person concerning job design, choice of equipment, and work methods. This should materialize in the reduction of monotonous and repetitive tasks, as they are one of the most harmful elements to the worker's health.
Generally, any preventive approach must be:
- Global: It should not be limited to the job position but should consider all factors, including psychosocial ones.
- Multidisciplinary: It should consider the different preventive disciplines which, in the specific case of psychosocial risks, will focus on psychology, occupational medicine, and ergonomics.
- Participatory: It is essential to involve and engage workers in adopting measures to prevent or reduce these psychosocial risks. With proper training, they will be able to identify risk situations themselves.
- Structured: The prevention of psychosocial risks cannot consist of independent actions but should follow long-term action plans, considering prevention as a stable and permanent organizational activity.
It is evident that to carry out psychosocial risk prevention policies, it is necessary to know the characteristics of each job position in the company to evaluate, identify, and avoid the specific risks of each case.
The techniques used to detect psychosocial risks include observation, analysis of statistical data on sick leaves, comprehensive models of working condition analysis, interviews, surveys, questionnaires, checklists, and discussion groups.
An effective intervention strategy should combine elements of primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention. Primary actions aim to reduce or eliminate the impact of risk sources on the individual. Secondary prevention involves educational and training actions aimed at enhancing the worker's abilities to better cope with stressful situations and to identify risk elements in their surroundings. Tertiary aspects should ensure rehabilitation follow-up and support for returning to work for employees who have suffered work-related illnesses.
The well-being and quality of work life of workers are rights that must be preserved. The prevention of psychosocial risks should be the challenge of every company seeking to achieve the right work climate for optimal performance.
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