In 1986, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) listed psychological disorders among the ten leading work-related diseases and injuries among U.S. workers. Psychosocial hazards, however, have
received scant attention among safety and health pros over the past decades. This is mainly because most pros focus on controlling physical, chemical and biological hazards in workplaces.

In 2010: 1) Polls show the majority of Americans are worried about job stress; 2) A shift from an industrial economy to a knowledge and service economy is ongoing, with the potential
for greater psychosocial hazards; and 3) The issue of psychosocial hazards at work is gaining global recognition. Put these trends together and psychosocial hazards should now rank equally in importance to managing workplace physical, chemical and biological hazards.

What are psychosocial hazards?

There is no simple definition for psychosocial hazards – one reason health and safety professionals have largely worked around the issue. According to NIOSH, psychological hazards include an unsatisfactory work environment such as “work overload, lack of control over one’s work, non-supportive supervisors or co-workers, limited job opportunities, role ambiguity or conflict, rotating shiftwork, and machine-paced work.” Psychosocial hazards, however, may be anything that conflicts with an employee’s social and mental well-being.

Impact on objectives

The negative impact of psychosocial hazards on an organization’s objectives include increased grievances and litigation; employee turnover; poor quality control; reduced productivity; sabotage; violence; absenteeism; and presenteeism. Presenteeism is a growing problem–employees are discontent with their job but they do not leave. Instead, they “retire on the job” and give minimal effort to help achieve organizational objectives. Studies show presenteeism among U.S. workers may be three times higher than absenteeism.

Select “mental disorder” as an injury type in OSHA’s “Safety Pays” web-based program and a single event may have a $2.6 million dollar impact on an organization’s profitability (or listen to the interview on France Culture).

Occupational disease

In March 2010, the International Labour Organization, a specialized agency of the United Nations, for the first time listed mental and behavioral disorders, post-traumatic stress disorders, and other mental or behavioral disorders as a recognized occupational disease. This action by the ILO
furthers the importance of the ISO 26000 Guidance on social responsibility standard (final standard expected to be published fourth quarter 2010) that includes a clause for all organizations worldwide to “strive to eliminate psychosocial hazards in the workplace, which contribute or lead to stress
and illness.”

Psychosocial disorders, under various definitions and conditions, are valid workers’ compensation claims in all U.S. states. Mental or emotional impairment that results from a traumatic event that is “extraordinary and unusual” is usually allowed.

But this concept is being stretched. In November 2009, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that a prison guard is eligible for workers’ compensation for mental impairment after he was threatened by an inmate. Even though threats from inmates to guards are common in prisons, some threats rise above what is ordinary and usual, ruled the court.

This year, a bill was introduced in Connecticut that will allow claims of mental or emotional impairment when police officers use deadly force on animals that attempt to injure them.

The famous World War II military leader General Patton, who reportedly once slapped a mentally stressed soldier in a hospital ward, could not fathom what’s happening with military personnel today. Mental stress, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, among people serving in the U.S. military
is at alltime high. The most acute consequence of stress is sobering: in FY 2009, 160 soldiers took their own lives and there were 1,713 suicide attempts. All branches of the military have ramped up efforts to recognize and control psychosocial disorders.

Guidance

Psychosocial hazards are a workplace risk. As such, these hazards should be initially addressed through ISO 31000:2009 Risk Management–Principles and Guidelines.

Other consensus standards that may help address psychosocial hazards include ISO 26000 and various elements within safety and health management systems standards such as OHSAS 18001 and ANSI Z10.

Although safety and health management systems focus control on physical, chemical and biological hazards, employee involvement activities such as safety committees and management leadership actions help support the recognition and control of psychosocial hazards.

The U.S. trails other nations, particularly countries in Europe, Australia and Canada, in recognition and control of psychosocial hazards. Therefore, international guidance on psychosocial hazards is necessary.

Assessment tools

Risk assessment is a major element within ISO 31000. Risk assessments for psychosocial hazards will generally come in the form of various measures, such as a survey of employees’ values, attitudes and beliefs.

A review of the United Kingdom’s Health and Safety Executive (HSE) report, “A critical review of psychosocial hazard measures” http://www.hse.gov.uk/research/crr_pdf/2001/crr01356.pdf, may help identify the measure(s) that are most appropriate to help meet your organization’s objectives.

The HSE’s “Stress management competency indicator tool,” http://www.hse.gov.uk/stress/mcit.htm, which determines an individual’s “stress management competence profile,” is designed to assess whether managers and line supervisors have the behaviors that are effective to prevent and reduce stress at work. Safety and health pros should use the tool to see where they rank on the profile and determine if they have behaviors that need improvement.

Resources

The following websites provide excellent guidance on psychosocial hazards:

http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/topics/stress/
http://www.hse.gov.uk/stress/index.htm
http://www.ilo.org/safework/areasofwork/lang-en/WCMS_108557/index.htm

The Navy and Marine Corps Public Health Center stress management website is an excellent gateway for locating psychosocial hazard recognition and stress management education programs. Link to the site at click here.

Sharing turf

Many of the controls for psychosocial disorders have a human resource component. HR involvement is notable in the HSE’s 10/09 document, “How to tackle work-related stress” (see HSE link above). Safety and health pros will need to share the turf with HR and complement each other’s interests
and skills if objectives are to be met. The evolution of behavioral safety programs that brought HR into the mix to help control accidents and injuries demonstrate that combined efforts among various career and job titles will be necessary to control psychosocial disorders.

Build people skills

Organizational management and people skills are necessary to fully appreciate, recognize, evaluate and control psychosocial disorders. These skills are not generally viewed as strengths among many safety and health pros. But as work is redefined in the growing knowledge and service
economy, management and people skills become more important to help prevent injury and illness.

The theory of psychosocial disorders and their development into occupational disease have evolved to the point where putting theory into practice is now at hand.

By Dan Markiewicz, MS, CIH, CSP, CHMM. Dan is an independent environmental health and safety consultant. He can be reached at (419) 356-3768 or by email at dan.markiewicz@gmail.com.

Copyright 2010 Business News Publishing Co.

Source : Industrial Safety & Hygiene News, 44(10): 30, October 2010. ISSN: 8755-2566

For a comparison of psychosocial hazard in US and France read Nader Barzin‘s interview :

Les RPS en France et aux Etats-Unis : un océan nous sépare-t-il ?

For information on how leadership coaching can allow for better organizational alignment and hence reducing stress at work see Nader Barzin‘s chapter on Strategic Coaching in the Grand Livre du Coaching.

Most consulting firms that specialize in this field (there are 4 or 5 established firms and there are quite a number of recent creations) focus on stress and the behavioral techniques that they believe can alleviate it. However, from a psychoanalytical point of view, stress is only a light form of anxiety and behavioral techniques can only temporarily displace this anxiety. If the source or elements that produce the anxiety are not modified, the anxiety – or stress – will reappear or find other forms of expression, depending on the psychological organization of the person. Addictions, use of legal or illegal drugs, or psychosomatic symptoms are some of the substitutes.

Statistics indicate a rise in stress – and other work pathologies – in France in the last decade. The question that this raises is what has changed in working conditions in France that can explain this phenomenon. At present almost half of the work force in France say that they are stressed and, according to specialized consulting firms, one third of workers in France – in all categories – suffer  form some sort of psychological problems.

The medical cost of stress is around 500 billion Euros per year and the cost of absenteeism is estimated around 300 billion Euros per year. However, these costs are only the visible tip of an iceberg of inefficiency that is difficult to evaluate. If a worker presents psychological pathologies, or is incapacitated to go to work, this most certainly indicates suboptimal organizational design or management.

So, why have the French chosen the term “risk”? Risk indicates the probability or threat of a damage, injury, liability, loss, or other negative occurrence, caused by external or internal vulnerabilities. These factors may hence be neutralized through pre-mediated action. That is why the term “risk” is used: the French authorities have been seeking to encourage employers to do what is necessary to avoid the apparition of pathologies.

Governments have their own agenda and set of desired outcomes. An additional factor that comes into the equation in France: the health system is national and so is the unemployment insurance. Employees with psychological pathologies present a cost to the government, not only as far as their treatment is concerned, but also when they are out of work! Additionally, the French are still under the impression that the government is there to protect them. Work pressures and exposure to tight competition from abroad can be considered as a sign of lack of protection from the State. Parties in power can be exposed to the risk of loosing their votes if the working population becomes disenchanted with work conditions.

Risk does not exist in psychopathology. The individual, based on her or his early childhood experiences, psychological organization of parents and systemic family elements, adolescence and adulthood experiences …, adopts a psychological organization that allows her to cope with life. There notion of “risk” does not exist as of yet, as there is a total uncertainty as to the “result” of all these factors. Uncertainty and risk are in a way opposites. Risk indicates a situation where future outcomes can be foreseen with a certain probability of happening.

So speaking of “socio-psychological” risk, it implies that there are certain social elements that could create psychological pathologies. But what would allow someone to affirm the existence of such conditions? Well, a higher number of individuals presenting pathologies in a social system (in a firm for example) would indicate that there are pathogenic factors in play in the social system. For example, a high level of suicide in an enterprise, or higher number

Contrary to situations of total uncertainty, the presence of risk allows for anticipation and management of this risk. In order to do so the evaluation of the risks in question is requires. The implementation of a supervision or oversight system can allow collecting data and creating indicators that can launch an alarm. The difficulty of socio-psychological risks is that pathologies are difficult to detect in early stages. It is therefore necessary to find correlations that allow detecting situations that can produce pathologies if gone untreated.of stressed employees than other firms.

Nader Barzin

According to the study, socio-psychological stressor contribute to the release of certain hormones, or the increase of blood pressure. They can also give rise to increased consumption of alcohol and drugs. These are in turn linked to 3 types of pathologies: Cardiovascular diseases, mental health problems, and muscular aches and problems. Exposure to work psycho-sociological risk factors can increase these pathologies by 50 to 100% according to the study.

Cardiovascular diseases, one of the first killers of men (2nd) and women (6th), is linked to work-related stress. in 2007 cardiovascular diseases where the first in the category of long term disease.  Mental health pathologies — essentially anxiety and depression — constitute the second category of pathologies of work with substantial weigh in morbidity.

In France, suicide — highly linked to depression — represented (in 2004) the first cause of death for women between 24 and 44, and the 4th for men between 45 and 64 and the 3rd for women of same age span. There are heavy public spending linked to these pathologies, given particularly the accessibility of health support for all in France. Also, the French consume much higher amounts of psychiatric medications that other European countries. Absenteeism is a constant and on the rise, as well as long-term, paid, sickness leaves (taken in charge by the French health authority). In 2002, mental health related expenses counted for 10.6% of French health system expenses — the 2nd position in terms of spending.

20% of people between 40 and 64 suffer from back pain or sciatic and muscular-skeletic illness is the first recognized professional illness. 1/3 of payoffs for absence by the French health authority was for this category of problems in 2008. Category which is on of the principal reasons for the increase of absenteeism and for work-related invalidity.

French authorities admit openly the effect of work psycho-sociological factors on health. Increased work exigency — both quantitative and qualitative –  lack of decision-making latitude, social support, and recognition are amongst factors identified. Other, more recent factors include: organizational injustice, lack of work security, and various forms of violence. For French authorities work-related psycho-sociological factors can be categorized in 6 dimensions: exigency of work, the emotional burden, autonomy and leeway, social and work relations, value conflicts, and socioeconomic insecurity.

Some French universities, such as the Master of Coaching of Université Panthéon-Assas, have started including work-related pathologies as part of their coaching training. A new study will be undertaken in 2010 and its results will become public in mid 2011.

Dr. Nader Barzin