National surveillance of psychosocial risk factors in the workplace: An international overview

Abstract

National surveillance of psychosocial risk factors in the workplace is important to record the changing work environment and for the development (and monitoring) of policies and programs to prevent stress and promote mental and physical health and well-being at work. This paper overviews national surveillance systems for psychosocial risks and outcomes (35 national systems across 20 different countries, and an additional four multi-country systems), and then looks for convergence between the system, and the current research literature. This paper is the first to provide a compendium of current national surveillance systems on psychosocial risk. It describes the content of each system and gives an overview of sampling methodology, providing an evaluation of comprehensiveness rather than of quality of tools and methods. Recommendations include: (1) surveillance should be the priority for any national research agenda for psychosocial risk management; (2) stakeholders should cooperate with international systems operators to work towards the development of “state of the art” systems; (3) issues for priority inclusion in surveillance systems are emotional demands/emotional labour, workplace bullying, harassment, and violence, exposure to acute stressors, organizational justice, the occurrence and impact of global organizational change, and positive psychological states; (4) systems should be flexible to identify and assess emerging risk factors/groups; and (5) an international surveillance system should be implemented.

Keywords:

• Psychosocial risks
• surveillance
• monitoring
• work-related stress
• occupational health
• risk assessment

We would like to acknowledge the assistance of many people who assisted in providing information about the systems and in validating the content of the tables. Thanks also to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful suggestions. The 2nd ICOH International Conference on Psychosocial Factors at Work, August 23, 2005, Japan, Roundtable with International Research Experts was funded by an ARC International Linkage Grant, LX0348225: The Australia-Netherlands Project on Work & Stress Research.