Over 100 European companies and federations have been honoured after volunteering to become official campaign partners of the ‘Healthy Workplaces Manage Stress’.
EU-OSHA, the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, paid tribute to the organisations and honoured them with a ceremony that was held as part of a two-day ‘Benchmarking event on Occupational Safety and Health’ in Brussels from 5-6 March.
It was announced that Siemens was the winner of an award in the area of managing work-related stress and psychosocial risks, part of the Healthy Workplaces Good Practice Awards competition and a new category created especially for official campaign partners.
Siemens won the award for its holistic psychosocial risk and resource management framework, ‘Life in Balance’ initiative. The company-wide programme focuses on five key areas: awareness, leadership involvement, communication, training and the Employee Assistance Program.
Since applying this initiative, absenteeism has decreased by 26%, there’s been a high level of improvements in service, lowered costs and better management reporting.
Marianne Thyssen, the European commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs, Skills and Labour Mobility, congratulated all the companies and organisations for taking workplace stress seriously.
She said: “Previous campaigns by EU-OSHA have highlighted the importance of management and workers tackling workplace health and safety issues together. Strong leadership by management and full involvement of workers in the problem-solving process are key ingredients to success.”
Director of EU-OSHA, Christa Sedlatschek, said: “This benchmarking event demonstrates the benefits of the exchange of good practice for European workplaces. It also shows just how important official campaign partners are to the Healthy Workplaces Campaign and the objectives of EU-OSHA.
“We are pleased to be co-operating with an unprecedented number of over 100 official campaign partners, from multinational corporations such as Heineken, Toyota, and Lego, to European Social Partners such as BUSINESSEUROPE and ETUC and many others. Their commitment is crucial for helping to tackle psychosocial risks and stress in the workplace.”
Brilliant and not exactly counter intuitive so, that just leaves addressing the debilitating issues surrounding Screen Fatigue reported by 58% of DSE user operators reducing presenteeism and the 30 odd days (20%) lost productivity per annum.