Documents work environment 252 results

"Objective
This study aimed to systematically review the effectiveness of organizational-level interventions in improving the psychosocial work environment and workers' health and retention.
Methods
We conducted an overview of systematic reviews on organizational-level interventions published between 2000 and 2020. We systematically searched academic databases, screened reference lists, and contacted experts, yielding 27 736 records. Of the 76 eligible reviews, 24 of weak quality were excluded, yielding 52 reviews of moderate (N=32) or strong (N=20) quality, covering 957 primary studies. We assessed quality of evidence based on quality of review, consistency of results, and proportion of controlled studies.
Results
Of the 52 reviews, 30 studied a specific intervention approach and 22 specific outcomes. Regarding intervention approaches, we found strong quality of evidence for interventions focusing on “changes in working time arrangements” and moderate quality of evidence for “influence on work tasks or work organization”, “health care approach changes”, and “improvements of the psychosocial work environment”. Regarding outcomes, we found strong quality of evidence for interventions about “burnout” and moderate quality evidence for “various health and wellbeing outcomes”. For all other types of interventions, quality of evidence was either low or inconclusive, including interventions on retention.
Conclusions
This overview of reviews identified strong or moderate quality of evidence for the effectiveness of organizational-level interventions for four specific intervention approaches and two health outcomes. This suggests that the work environment and the health of employees can be improved by certain organizational-level interventions. We need more research, especially about implementation and context, to improve the evidence."

"This study estimated the economic effects of hypothetical interventions improving different aspects of Danish workers' psychosocial work environment. We found substantial economic gains, mostly driven by savings related to sickness absence, from simultaneous improvements of all aspects. Economic effects from improvements in specific aspects varied a lot. The results may be useful when considering implementing future real-life interventions."

This work is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

"This report outlines how the authorities in the five Nordic countries, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden, carry out their inspections of the psychosocial working environment at the enterprises. Starting out with a description of the psychosocial risks, the report proceeds with a comparison of the differences between the different national regulations as well as an outline of the similarities. The report offers a comparison of the Nordic working environment strategies and a detailed presentation of the different targets and areas of initiative. It also presents how different methods are used in the selection of enterprises, sectors and job groups for inspection and how the inspectors are trained to carry out the inspections. The report rounds off with a description of the different national inspection methods and how to measure their effects."

"The objective of the study is to compare Nordic programs on the working
environment and safety and health at work as well as their strategic approaches. Another aim is to interpret the differences, similarities, and semantic relations between national (Nordic) working environment programs and the European Union's corresponding ones. This is done with regard
to the strategic lines of the programs and the contents of the procedural programs. The objective of the study is to further the discussion among the Nordic countries on the situation of their country-specific strategies/programs.

The Nordic policies on health and safety at work are examined in light of the country-specific strategies/programs on health and safety at work. The background programs and comparison criteria encompass the European Union's strategies on health and safety at work for the years 2002–2006
and 2007–2012 and the Programme for the Nordic Council of Ministers' co-operation in the labour market and working environment sectors 2005–2008.

The research is conducted through a qualitative content analysis. In the rst phase of the analysis, the material was studied iteratively to find the common, reduced themes of all the programs/strategies: the objectives, means, action level, actor level, and authority activity. In the next phase, the themes were examined by looking for differences and similarities of expression between the programs/strategies, whereupon different contentrelated strategy dimensions were derived. The analysis continued by examining each background and country-speci c program from the viewpoint of these strategy dimensions.

Based on the above analysis, one may conclude that the European Union's programs and the Nordic program emphasize quite different viewpoints. The state has a different role in these programs, which results in different cultures regarding the OSH (Occupational Safety and Health) policy practices and their amendment. The EU strategy has a distinctly reformative role; it is aimed at leading the member states toward a new way of thinking. The Nordic strategy is a mere account of the prevailing thinking in the Nordic countries, and therefore it emphasizes state-centred, traditional features in comparison to the programs of the European Union.

Especially the objectives and means of the Nordic country-specific programs deviate from their background programs. Except for Denmark, the Nordic countries have relatively general and principled objectives concerning their ideologies on health and safety at work. The actor practices of the Finnish program are the closest match to the EU programs. When comparing the country-specific programs/strategies, the consulta12Nordic OSH Policies tive nature of authority action stands out as a distinct feature of the Finnish strategy. The Swedish program is characterized by the prioritization of
objectives from the starting point of certain lines of business. The special feature of the Norwegian strategy is its authority-oriented actor level. The Danish program is marked by rewarding, punitive, and controlling authority action, and the Icelandic by the concrete means through which its objectives are pursued. To sum it up, the Nordic countries appear dissimilar – even divergent – in regard to the salient content dimensions of their strategies on safety and health at work."

"In the 1970s, Xerox pioneered the involvement of social science researchers in technology design and in developing better ways of working. The Xerox legacy is a hybrid methodology that combines an ethnographic interest in direct observation in settings of interest with an ethnomethodological concern to make the study of interactional work an empirical, investigatory matter. This edited volume is an overview of Xerox's social science tradition. It uses detailed case studies showing how the client engagement was conducted over time and how the findings were consequential for business impact. Case studies in retail, production, office and home settings cover four topics: practices around documents, the customer front, learning and knowledge-sharing, and competency transfer. The impetus for this book was a 2003 Xerox initiative to transfer knowledge about conducting ethnographically grounded work practice studies to its consultants so that they may generate the kinds of knowledge generated by the researchers themselves."

"Objective The aim of this study was to examine whether shared and open-plan offices are associated with more days of sickness absence than cellular offices. Methods The analysis was based on a national survey of Danish inhabitants between 18–59 years of age (response rate 62%), and the study population consisted of the 2403 employees that reported working in offices. The different types of offices were characterized according to self-reported number of occupants in the space. The log-linear Poisson model was used to model the number of self-reported sickness absence days depending on the type of office; the analysis was adjusted for age, gender, socioeconomic status, body mass index, alcohol consumption, smoking habits, and physical activity during leisure time. Results Sickness absence was significantly related to having a greater number of occupants in the office (P<0.001) when adjusting for confounders. Compared to cellular offices, occupants in 2-person offices had 50% more days of sickness absence [rate ratio (RR) 1.50, 95% confidence interval (95% CI) 1.13–1.98], occupants in 3–6-person offices had 36% more days of sickness absence (RR 1.36, 95% CI 1.08–1.73), and occupants in open-plan offices (>6 persons) had 62% more days of sickness absence (RR 1.62, 95% CI 1.30–2.02). Conclusion Occupants sharing an office and occupants in open-plan offices (>6 occupants) had significantly more days of sickness absence than occupants in cellular offices."