ECJ EUROPEAN Cleaning Journal

The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) in Brussels has launched a two year Europe-wide campaign: ‘Healthy Workplaces Manage Stress.

The prevalence of work-related stress in Europe is startling it says. EU-OSHA's latest pan-European opinion poll revealed that 51 per cent of workers find work-related stress to be common in their workplace and four in 10 workers think that stress is not handled well in their organisation.

EU commissioner for employment, social affairs and inclusion László Andor said: "Managing work-related stress is one of the cornerstones in ensuring the health, safety and wellbeing of European workers. Workplaces cannot afford to ignore work-related stress, which increases absenteeism and lowers productivity.

"The forthcoming EU Strategic Framework on Health and Safety at work 2014-20 will underline that better protection of workers' mental health is a key factor to prevent work-related diseases. The framework will propose a range of actions, such as sharing good practices, for promoting mental health at work.

"A positive working environment is not only important for enabling employees to work longer, it is also important to ensure that when workers do retire, they are still in good health. I am convinced that the new EU-OSHA campaign on stress and psychosocial risks at work will greatly contribute to this objective."

The Healthy Workplaces Campaign seeks to show how psychosocial risks can be handled in the same systematic way as any other occupational safety and health risk. It aims to promote the use of simple tools which can help organisations to effectively manage these risks and highlight the positive effects of doing so.

The campaign invites all organisations and individuals at local, national and European levels to take part. It will be coordinated at national level by EU-OSHA's national focal points in more than 30 European countries, and supported by official campaign partners - pan-European and multinational organisations and the campaign media partners. The Healthy Workplaces Campaign is also backed by the EU Council Presidencies, the European Parliament, the European Commission and the European social partners.

‘Healthy Workplaces Manage Stress' will run for two years and will involve hundreds of organisations from across Europe, involving a range of activities such as training sessions, conferences and workshops, poster, film and photo competitions, quizzes, suggestion schemes, advertising campaigns and press conferences.

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