Stress – Mind – Health The START procedure for the risk assessment and risk management of work-related stress di Rolf Satzer , clicca x art. int.

da European Agency for Safety and Health at Work 

Since 1996, a labour protection law in compliance with the compulsory statutory prescriptions of the European Union (Directive 89/391/EEC) has also been applied in Germany. At the heart of the law lies the intention to create a people-friendly structuring of work, and along with it, all-inclusive, effective and preventative occupational health and safety. Put in another way, it concerns a humanisation of work in order to make possible working conditions that not only prevent the occurrence of health problems and illnesses but also make it possible for employees to work in a safe and healthy way. Inappropriate mental stress such as work-related stress due to heavy work load and time pressure is part and parcel of everyday working life for an increasing number of employees, with corresponding effects on their health. Estimates and scientific research reveal that in Germany around 20,000 cases of heart attacks have work-related causes. In relation to the amount of inappropriate mental stress, experts like the occupational health practitioner Professor Siegrist judge that 10,000 of these heart attack cases could be prevented by stress prevention at the workplace. All the more important, therefore, are company preventative measures and corporate campaigns such as those that have been conducted within the framework of “The Company Crime Scene - psychological stress“ by IG Metall in Baden-Württemberg. The experiences collected here show: a risk assessment of mental stress at a company level is made possible by the use of simple, comprehensible and practical tools. This leads as a consequence to a marked improvement in the stress and health conditions of employees and can provide a springboard for an advanced preventative process. The present Handbook presents an implementation strategy for risk assessment of mental stress which was carried out with positive results in numerous companies within the framework of the campaign. It sets out a handy procedure that has been tried and tested in company practice and which is recommended to employees, workers’ councils, employers and company occupational health and safety practitioners. The procedure is based on statutory requirements and norms. It can be modified, meaning that it can be tailored to varying working conditions and requirements......The norm relates explicitly to the workplace and applies to the structuring of working conditions. It distinguishesbetween occupational mental stress and the demands of work, where occupational stress is to be understood as those factors that affect people. In contrast to this, mental strain represents the immediate (not long term) personal consequences of these work-related effects on people – that is, the short term results of demands on the body and mind. These definitions are, first of all, very general and neutral; that is, one can presume that there may be positive as well as negative stresses and demands. So the term stress, contrary to its use in everyday speech, is not employed in a negative sense but rather neutrally in the first instance. Stress can have positive as well as negative effects. Positive effects may for instance take the form of motivation, training, practice or the development of a skill.......Mental stress is here defined as “The total of all assessable influences impinging upon a human being from external sources and affecting it mentally” The norm lists in an exemplary and concrete way what is to be understood by these influences from the occupational point of view. They come into being through: demands made upon them by the task (e.g. the processing of information, unbroken concentration, shift work or risks); social and organisational factors (e.g. the atmosphere in the company or the management structures); physical conditions (e.g. noise or climatic conditions); social factors outside the organisation (e.g. the economic situation); In relation to the working process the factors that influence mental stress and its characteristics may be set out in the following manner...........................traduci con google

orso castano : anche a livello europeo le istituzioni preposte agli interventi sulle malattie da lavoro stanno semprepiu' prendendo coscienza ed organizzando interventi per riconoscere e prevenire i rischi che provocano stress lavorativo . L'articolo ne e' un esempio , anche se molti concetti e strumenti di controllo in questo campo  sono ancore da meglio definire. Questo certamente avverra' nel tempo attraverso la loro sperimentazione. Interessante il concetto , ancora abbozzato, sul lavoro come fattore per i well beeing.