Editorial
Managing Work-related Stress
November 2014
Sheila Pantry OBE
2014 European Week for Safety and Health at Work, a highlight of the Healthy Workplaces Campaign took place at the end of October with hundreds of events held across Europe to mark the occasion. Keeping with the current theme – Healthy Workplaces Manage Stress – the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) and its community of partners got Europe talking about stress and psychosocial risks in the workplace and how we can tackle them together.
Dr Christa Sedlatschek, Director of EU-OSHA said: “This is an issue which can have enormous costs for both the health of employees and of businesses. With work-related stress being the second most frequently reported health problem in Europe and with costs to businesses of mental health disorders estimated at around 240 billion Euros per year, this is something that we simply cannot afford to ignore. As is evident from the week’s full programme of events, our network across Europe is doing a good job to make sure employers and employees do take notice.”
Partners of the Healthy Workplaces Campaign − including enterprises, employer and employee representatives, as well as OSH specialists held a variety of ways to highlight the campaign messages: there were press conferences in Belgium and Slovenia, training activities in the UK, a conference in Iceland, and a Healthy Workplaces film screening in Estonia. Events were held not only at national level – Europe’s regions also got in on the action!
For interesting facts and figures across Europe see report listed in https://osha.europa.eu/en/surveys-and-statistics-osh
FOCUS
This month’s OSHWORLD FOCUS is entitled Risks and challenges ahead – New and emerging occupational safety and health (OSH) trends.
OSHWORLD – your portal to some of the best OSH web sites in the world
Where ever you are in the world have a look at your health, safety, chemical, fire and environment procedures in your workplace and update them. Your review may also indicate training requirements and re-thinking how systems and services can be improved. This is where the free-of-charge OSHWORLD can help you.
In these days of tighter budgets perhaps training may be put on the “back-burner” – but think again how you can keep up with the latest techniques and training opportunities. So look at the latest additions to the Diary of Events and you will see plans have been made already worldwide up to the end of 2015 and beyond to have training courses, symposiums and conferences in many places in the world on a wide range of subjects.
Remember that even if you cannot attend these many events, speakers and organisers are often willing to share their knowledge. Look at the details – where possible, we add in the web sites of these events so you can request further information. And do let me know if you are organising any OSHE events so that I can add them to the Diary.
Resources
In addition to the above we hope that you find the information in OSHWORLD useful in your daily work. Globally there are continually new titles, news items, new products so remember to look at the News to find the latest information from a range of worldwide sources.
Use OSHWORLD as your portal to many hundreds of validated and authoritative web sites that you can find in the Country and Subject links we offer. New subject topics are constantly brought together on web sites, e.g. nanotechnology and the workplace.
Most information services have a reference shelf where you can quickly check the reference sources – so OSHWORLD brings you a collection of Reference sources and also teaches you how to Search the Internet.
Visit the various Bookshops to order any new document as they are being published. Many of these Bookshops have a constant stream of new titles available.
Please send any suggestions or comments about OSHWORLD – your portal to validated and authoritative information. Remember also to look at our other really useful sites – www.sheilapantry.com and why not make a free entry about your company’s products in www.shebuyersguide.com.
Don’t forget to learn from history visit www.historyofosh.org.uk
Don’t work harder – work smarter! Be ahead of the game.
Well did you have a zero accident, incident-free and healthy year in 2013 in your workplace? Some would argue that this is not possible! But keep on trying again in 2014!
And do continue to make plans for your campaigns for 2015 and beyond!