Occupational Health Management

We support you in developing a concept for personal health management tailored to your company. Depending on your needs, we accompany you in individual phases or in the entire process of developing and implementing your company health management system.

For the sustainable development of a health promoting corporate culture, we organize for the workforce of your company:
 

  • mindfulness days / mindfulness training
  • Participation in health days
  • Future Workshop
  • Conducting seminars and further education on communication, stress management, conflict management,
  • Burnout prevention and resilience as needed


For a first non-binding discussion to discuss your specific needs, please arrange a detailed appointment with our specialists in occupational psychology.

 

prevention in workforce healthcare

The discrepancy between work burden and work stress is developing with increasing speed. Every year, companies run the risk of losing essential productivity or losing their operational skills due to absenteeism or even fluctuation.

For occupational health and safety, there are countless rules and legal regulations as well as offers from various institutions. However, the measures that are binding or that bring a significant amount to an improvement can only be reflected in a sustainable stocktaking.

The result of an inventory provides the foundation for building a prevention culture in health management. ISO 10075 defines mental stress and strain as the sum of all tangible influences that affect people's work design externally.

Basically, in a preventive work culture, all (work) burdens should be reduced to a non-hazardous level, so that every employee is unable to overburden them and thus their health risks.
 

work burden and work stress

Burden
Burden is what a person has to deal with in a certain relationship (not a voluntary choice but a liability in that relationship, ie work by employment, self-employment, other obligations as a parent or social obligation, for example, assistance), ie an imperative obligation.

Example:

  • Furniture transporter carrying the piano to the fourth floor
  • Communication clerk, (part-time, single parent), changes to a trade fair presentation in the glass office with desk arrangement with back to the office door
  • Welder, lone work, rail welding in summerheat at 32 °C.



Stress
Stress is what affects a person from the outside. Objective factors such as Load, time pressure or changing expectations, indefinite risk factors are obviously recognizable features.
However, the non-obvious features of a stress are largely more dramatic and much more complex to determine.

Example

  • Furniture transporter, ankle injured at weekend getaway with family, sick leave puts colleagues in trouble and creates existential fears of job loss; (Presentism)
  • Communication clerk, backache, observation on the presentation plate with back to the glass door. Sisyphus work appears to be never ending and without acceptance
  • Welder, isolated without emergency assistance, welding fumes and circulatory problems due to heat and protective clothing


Stress is understood to mean not only the externally visible or measurable influences, such as noise or temperature, but in particular the non-metrologically detectable consequences of the individual stresses, fears or stress-inducing factors.

The stress can be differentiated in:

  • physical stress
  • Stress on the musculature, the condition, the sense organs
  • mental stress
  • Stress of creativity, of memory


but also:
Compensation of personal care, (existential anxiety, family conditions, clinical pictures, loss of performance, displacement by other employees).

An unmanageable discrepancy between the demands of a person and the individual resources to compensate for the discrepancy accelerates absenteeism, inner layoffs and burnout, as well as patterns of behavior to avoid negative consequences.


Mental stress according to DIN EN ISO 10075
ISO 10075 defines mental stress and strain as the sum of all tangible influences that affect people's work design externally.

Basically, in a preventive work culture, all (work) burdens should be reduced to a non-hazardous level, so that every employee is unable to overburden them and thus their health risks.

Each claim is subjectively and individually dependent on:

  • the sum and the combination of all individual, external load factors
  • the ability to compensate and the condition of the person concerned
  • the adaptive benefit and the loyalty
  • willingness to perform and motivation


The higher a discrepancy between burden and stress can be depicted, the clearer are leadership failures and, as a result, an extrinsic corporate culture. High sick leave, high turnover and clear signs of presentism and absenteeism are a task for the top management and not for the human resources department.


Designing for a loyal corporate culture is in a sustainability such as to find the CSR or even in behavioral safety

Absenteeism and presentism

Absenteeism

Absenteeism refers to absenteeism of employees who, in response to special behavioral constraints, make a decision on absence.

Causes models
Motivation-induced absenteeism is subject to several causes. Explanatory Models for Absentism (Johns, 1987; Nicholson, 1989):

 

  • Withdrawal Model
    The reaction behavior of an affected person to temporarily withdraw from burdensome and negative demands on work activity is the most common and simplest explanatory model.
     
  • Medical Model
    An illness is largely understood as a socially acceptable excuse for a short-term absence from the workplace. The form of self-determined stress management by elimination of the health impact of environmental influences is often indicative of stress exodus.
     
  • Settlement Model
    Resistance to company regulations is made by attempting to undermine the working model perceived as unfair (working hours such as shift shift, on-call duty holiday work) by violating the relevant rules as restoring the individual sense of justice with absence.
     
  • Aversion Model
    Aversion is usually associated with the drive to avoid the risks and disadvantages of carrying out the professional activity. Aversive stimuli trigger an avoidance reaction. Aversions are usually unpleasant or hurtful experiences (blame before the assembled workforce), or a linkage (conditioning) of unpleasant events, (withdrawal of pay in case of punctuality, transfer to an unpopular job). Absentism through aversion is the cause of far-reaching leadership mistakes.
     
  • Company Cultural Model
    More complex cause and effect Systems for the development of individual reactions in the form of absenteeism are subject to the socio-cultural influence in the workplace of employees and executives. Working groups, departments, organizations, occupational groups have specific established customs, rules, norms, sanctions and practices relating to company or work groups to create goals, codices and individual preferences. If the workload and quality of results of the colleagues depends on their own performance, this can play a decisive role in the consideration process.



Understanding about willingness to work, group affiliation, or lack of understanding of ability to work or ability to integrate lead to different manifestations of narcissistic claim behavior over followers to the attempt of stress withdrawal through absenteeism; (Human engineering)


Presenteeism

Presentee is understood to be the decision on the presence of workers in the workplace, which is taken in response to specific behavioral constraints despite significant illness.

Employees decide to be present for fear of negative consequences and thus go along with the risk of a position or even job loss. One key insight into human risk behavior is the fact that people, consciously or unconsciously, are not fundamentally opposed to a risk as a "task", but in fact rather fear the apparent or anticipated losses that threaten without the use of risky behavior
Often, executives and employees are unaware of the objectivity that presenteeism is a significantly more serious cost and harm factor than a disease-related failure.
Productivity decreases and the factors that promote risk increase the likelihood of an accident.

 

QHSE Compliance
EU

QHSE Management Division Europe

If there is any question that we can answer, please let us know
Dr.med. Gudrun Mekle MBA
CEO QHSE Ltd.
+49 (0) 231 / 952 99 4 99