Interventions as the centrepiece of psychosocial risk assessment – why so difficult?

• Pages: 61-80
• Date: 28 November 2019
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJWHM-07-2018-0098
• Published date: 28 November 2019
• Author: Katja Schuller
• Subject Matter: Health & social care,Healthcare management,HR & organizational behaviour,Human resource policy,Employee welfare

Interventions as the

centrepiece of psychosocial risk

assessment –why so difficult?

Katja Schuller

Unit 3.5 Mental Workload,

Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, Berlin, Germany

Abstract

Purpose –Due to the “European Union Framework Directive on Safety and Health at work”(Directive

89/391/EEC, 1989), every employer is obliged to avoid psychosocial hazards when designing work. Little is

known empirically about the barriers that workplace actors experience while developing and implementing

OSH measures that prevent psychosocial hazards. The purpose of this paper is to explore barriers, causes and

attempts to overcome them and discusses them with reference to relevant theoretical concepts and models

that help to explain how these barriers hinder the development and implementation of OSH measures.

Design/methodology/approach –Semi-structured interviews with workplace actors in charge of

psychosocial risk assessment (PRA) were conducted in 41 business cases, and transcripts were analysed

using a thematic analysis approach. Barriers, causes and attempts to overcome them were extracted

inductively and discussed with reference to relevant theories and explanatory models.

Findings –The complex nature of psychosocial risks, hindering general beliefs, lack of a perceived scope for

risk avoidance, lack of assumptions of responsibility among players on all hierarchical levels, discrepancies

between formal responsibility and decision authority, and low reflexivity on processes of development and

implementation of interventions were described as barriers. Causes and attempts to overcome these barriers

were reflected upon by workplace actors.

Practical implications –Recommendations on the organisation of PRA will be given with respect to the

reported results and relevant research in this field.

Originality/value –This qualitative study explores the barriers to developing and implementing OSH measures

to eliminate psychosocial hazards, from the perspective of actors in charge of PRA, and why they might fail.

Keywords Workplace health, Qualitative research, Barriers, OSH interventions,

Psychosocial risk assessment (PRA)

Paper type Research paper

Introduction

There is strong evidence that work-related psychosocial hazards are risk factors for a wide range

of somatic and mental health outcomes (e.g. LekaandJain,2010).Furthermore,psychosocial

hazards, such as high psychological demands, low decision latitude or high emotional demands,

continue to have a high prevalence in working populations (e.g. Niedhammer et al., 2012; Parker

et al., 2017; Vargas et al., 2014). Thus, eliminating or at least reducing work-related psychosocial

hazards through adequate work (re)design remains an important challenge for securing health

and safety at work. One important legal instrument in this context is the obligation for

employers to take appropriate action to reduce risks by conducting psychosocial risk assessment

(PRA) (§5 ArbSchG, EU-OSHA, 2008). Nevertheless, survey data show that assessments of

psychosocial hazards (PRA) are far from being implemented across the board (Ahlers, 2016;

Sczesny et al., 2014; van den Heuvel et al., 2018). Moreover, even if enterprises assess

psychosocial hazards, developing and implementing adequate measures and interventions,

International Journal of Workplace

Health Management

Vol. 13 No. 1, 2020

pp. 61-80

Emerald Publishing Limited

1753-8351

DOI 10.1108/IJWHM-07-2018-0098

Received 25 July 2018

Revised 13 February 2019

11 October 2019

Accepted 21 October 2019

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

www.emeraldinsight.com/1753-8351.htm

© Katja Schuller. Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the

Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and

create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to

full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at

http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode

61

Psychosocial

risk

assessment

i.e., “taking action”, remains challenging (e.g. Hasle, 2011). To offer adequate support to

initiatives that seek to make workplaces safer and healthier for employees, it is especially

important to understand what makes it so difficult to design measures that reduce or eliminate

psychosocial risks in the context of PRA. Therefore, based on the experiences of actors on the

operational level (such as OSH professionals and managers) during the process of PRA, this

paper investigates the barriers to designing appropriate measures.

Theoretical framework

Cox and Griffiths (2005) defined psychosocial (risk) factors as aspects of the design and

management of work and its social and organisational contexts, such as work content

(e.g. decision latitude), organisation of work (e.g. quantitative work demands, working time),

interpersonal relationships atwork (e.g. social supportfrom supervisors),or work environment

(e.g. extra-aural noise, poor lighting) (e.g. GDA, 2018; Leka et al., 2008; NAK, 2018). If these

aspects are designed in a way that will potentially harm employees physically or mentally,

they become psychosocial hazards (Leka an d Jain, 2010). The most influential models that

describerelations betweenpsychosocial risk factors and healthoutcomes are the job-demands-

resources model (Bakker and Demerouti, 2007), th e job-demand-control(-support) model

(Karasek, 1979; Johnson and Hall, 1988), the effort-reward-imbalance model (Siegrist et al., 1997)

and the action regulation theory (e.g. Hacker, 2003). Drawing on these concepts, relations

among a multitude of psychosocial risk factors and a wide range of health outcomes, such as

cardiovascular diseases (e.g. Dragano et al., 2017; Jood et al., 2017), mental disorders

(e.g. Harveyet al., 2017; Madsen et al., 2017; Rau et al., 2010), sleep disturban ces(e.g. Han son et

al., 2011; Van Laethem et al., 2013) and other health-related outcomes, such as rumination

(e.g. Cropley et al., 2006; Querstret and Cropley, 2012), detachment (e.g. Sonnentag and Bayer,

2005; Wendsche and Lohmann-Haislah, 2016) and sickness absence (e.g. Labriola et al., 2006)

are well documented (e.g. Leka and Jain, 2010; Rothe et al., 2017).

Following the “European Union Framework Directive on Safety and Health at Work”

(Directive 89/391/EEC, 1989), the German “SafetyandHealthatWorkAct”(2013) obliges every

employer to design work “to avoid, as far as possible, any risk to life and physical and mental

health and to keep the remaining risk as low as possible”(ArbSchG §4). To eliminate or at least

reduce psychosocial hazards, appropriate action must be taken by conducting risk assessment

(§5 ArbSchG). Risk assessment is a “systematic examination (a) of all aspects of work that could

cause injury or harm; (b) whether hazards can be eliminated and, (c) if not what preventive or

protective measures need to be in place to control the risks”(EU-OSHA, 2008).

According to EU-OSHA (2008), the PRA process should include the following steps:

identify the hazards and those at risk, evaluate and prioritise the risks, decide on preventive

action, take action, and monitor and review. These process steps are supposed to be suitable

for a successfulpsychosocial riskmanagement process. However,assessments of psychosocial

hazards (PRA), including the development and implementation of adequate measures and

interventions, are challenging to implement in op erational practices (Ahlers, 2016; Hasle, 2011;

Sczesny et al., 2014; van den Heuvel et al., 2018).Studies using expert interviews (Langenhan

et al., 2013; Sivrisand Leka, 2015) and quantitative data from the ESENER survey (Milczarek

et al., 2012) provide an overview of barriers to implementing psychosocial risk management

(PRM) in general.A lack of resources (suchas financial constraints,knowledge deficiency,lack

of technical support, time pressure), competing priorities, lack of awareness, fear (because of

the sensitivityof the issue) and cultural gaps have been shown to impede the implementation

of PRM in general. More specifically, evaluation research on occupational health and safety

interventions emphasisesimportant challenges forthe successful implementation of measures

on an organisational level, such as gaining the commitment of management (e.g. Noblet and

LaMontagne, 2009; Polanyi et al., 2005), establishing par ticipative proc esses (Mikkel sen et al.,

2000; Sagie and Koslowsky, 1996; Toker et al., 2015) and fostering readiness for change

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