Roland Polacsek Ernst
In context of the 2010-2012 European Committee of Senior Labor Inspectors (SLIC) Campaign on psychosocial risks, Austria amended its Occupational Health and Safety Act in 2013 forcing all companies to evaluate and reduce psychosocial stressors. To comply with this law more than 300 companies evaluated the psychosocial risks with the Module2 of Psychosocial Stressors (PBM2). 41 of these companies with 21.216 employees already evaluated the effects of their risk reducing measures. Data of total revenue, number of employees and the PBM2 before (t0) and after intervention (t1) were available for 30 companies with19.403 employees at t0. All 30 companies were able to improve their working conditions and reduce work related distress. The average improvement was 6.5% (on a 100% scale). The best overall development was made in the Work Environment, with 10.3%, followed by Social Climate with 7.6%, the Job Requirements with 5.3% and finally the Work Organization with 2.6%. In the same period the annual revenue of these companies grew by 8.5% and the Number of employees by 4.9%. Therefore also the revenue per employee increased by 3.4%. Interventions in the context of the mandatory psychosocial risk assessment for Austrian companies led to significant reductions in psychosocial risks and sickness leave days. The changes in the Austrian law and consequent implementation improved the working conditions significantly and also led to a positive development in revenue, number of employees and revenue per employee in these companies.