Challenge: gathering Europe in a joint vision for the work environment

Whether a person is in employment or not can be a tricky enough question, as working life becomes increasingly flexible — or uncertain — depending on whether you are an employer or employee.

But the grey areas of uncertainty become even greater if you look at work environments. Anything from nano particles, chemicals, noise and working hours to salaries and management issues can influence work environments. Conditions which one person can handle just fine could be the very things making another person sick. As the service industry grows, the kind of work environment issues which matter the most changes too. 

It is not so easy to determine whether or not a business is ‘healthy’ either. Is the level of sick leave falling because the work environment has improved or is it because those who are on sick leave are taking early retirement?

For as long as the two European work environment organisations have existed, a lot has been done to gather comparable statistics. The first pan-European survey, called the European Working Conditions Survey — or EWCS — was not carried out until 1991, and included 12 member states.  The latest one, EWCS 5, came in 2010 and included 34 countries, including Norway (but not Iceland). 44,000 people were interviewed and asked to answer 242 questions. Work is still going on to analyse the material and to draw conclusions.

Changing theories

While the surveys have been carried out, the view of for instance psychosocial risks has changed too. Researchers have launched different theories for what causes the problems. This means new questions must be asked.

The joint report, ‘Psychosocial risks in Europe: Prevalence and strategies for prevention’, lists three influential theoretical concepts:

• The first is the demand and control theory, developed 35 years ago by Swedish researcher Töres Theorell and his American colleague Robert A Karasek. According to the two professors, jobs with high levels of demand coupled with low levels of control lead to negative health effects and poor production levels. People’s creativity and enthusiasm should be encouraged instead.
• The second theory proposes that psychological stress results from a mismatch between efforts made by workers and the rewards they receive from their employer in terms of pay, esteem, job security and career opportunities. The Swiss researcher Johannes Siegrest is behind this model which is known as the effort-reward imbalance model.
• The third theory looks at how work is organised and whether the workload is distributed equally. ‘Organisational justice’ is an umbrella term for many different kinds of justice issues, looking at whether men and women get equal pay for equal work, whether workers’ input is measured in a way they have no confidence in, unfair dismissal etc. The Finnish researcher Marjko Evolaino is one of those who have shown how these issues have major consequences for people’s health too.