1,720,983 research outputs found
Prevalence of work related musculoskeletal disorders in Italian workers: is there an underestimation of the related occupational risk factors?
No full textBackground: Work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WMSDs) represent an important socio-economic burden. The current risk assessment and management involved in the ethiopathogenesis of WMSDs is based on observational tools and checklists, which have some limitations in terms of accuracy and reliability. The aim of this study was to assess WMSD prevalence and identify possible correlations with several socio-demographic and work-related variables in a large cohort representative of Italian workers in order to improve our understanding of the WMSD phenomenon. Methods: This study includes data from INSuLa, a cross-sectional nationally representative survey of health and safety at work, developed by the Italian Workers’ Compensation Authority. A total of 8000 Italian workers were included. Multivariate logistic regression analyses were performed to evaluate the association of independent variables, such as workers’ perceptions of exposure to biomechanical/ergonomic and video display unit (VDU) risks (Risk Perceived) and the actual risk exposure (Risk Detected) on Back, Lower and Upper limb pain. Socio-demographic, occupational and other health-related variables were included to investigate possible association with musculoskeletal disorders. Results: Workers perceiving a significant exposure to biomechanical/ergonomic and VDU risks but not included in a health surveillance program for them (Risk Perceived/No Risk Detected) have had significantly higher odds of reporting musculoskeletal disorders. Regarding the biomechanical/ergonomic risk these workers are in the 19–24 age range (39.9%), transportation, warehousing/information and communication sectors (38.9%) and are employed in companies with more than 250 workers (35.8%). Regarding VDU risk, workers are in the 45–54 age range (24.5%), professional, financial and business services (38.0%) and come from companies with more than 250 employees (25.6%). Conclusions: Within the occupational safety and health management systems an appropriate assessment of occupational risk factors correlated to musculoskeletal disorders (mainly biomechanical/ergonomic and VDU) and the correct definition of their exposure levels is essential to adequately prevent the onset of WMSDs. In this regard, our findings provide useful information to design novel approaches, aimed at improving our understanding of emerging risks, identifying gaps in current risk assessment strategies and enhancing workplace interventions are mandatory to improve the occupational risk assessment and management process and therefore implement the subsequent health surveillance systems
Good example 41. A tool for the risk assessment and risk management of work-related stress - Italy
No full textThe challenge of making the work smarter: a Systematic Review of remote working demands and resources
No full textThe recent Covid-19 pandemic changed working landscape to a great extent: in this situation remote working has become an essential work-practice. Nevertheless, remote working could be a weapon with two edges: on one hand, it has various benefits such as a better work-life balance, providing more flexibility to work, increase in job satisfaction, and employee engagement. On the other hand, several studies indicated that remote work could be challenging for many employees compared to working at the office (e.g., social isolation and technostress). Considering the growing use of technology and flexibility at the workplace, there is a need to systematize the evidence from studies conducted before, during and after the pandemic to support employers, policy makers and OSH professionals. The aim of this systematic literature review is to explore the existing knowledge about remote working to identify potential risk factors (demands) and protection factors (resources), and their impact on employees’ wellbeing. Following PRISMA guidelines, we performed a literature search and we decided to include one hundred and four studies, published between 2012 and 2022, using quantitative designs. We have identified a wide range of risk factors (e.g., isolation, work overload and technology intrusion) and resources (e.g., social support, autonomy, and flexibility). Moreover, the most investigated aspects of well-being are burnout, work engagement, and musculoskeletal symptoms. Increasing knowledge of remote working will help identify effective implementation strategies for companies, capable of making work smarter for both employees and organizations
Young workers’ access to and awareness of occupational safety and health services: age-differences and possible drivers in a large survey of employees in Italy
Get PDFYoung workers are in particular need of occupational safety and health (OSH) services, but it is unclear whether they have the necessary access to such services. We compared young with older workers in terms of the access to and awareness of OSH services, and examined if differences in employment conditions accounted for age-differences. We used survey data from Italy (INSuLA 1, 2014), with a sample of 8000 employed men and women aged 19 to 65 years, including 732 young workers aged under 30 years. Six questions measured access to services, and five questions assessed awareness of different OSH issues. Several employment conditions were included. Analyses revealed that young workers had less access and a lower awareness of OSH issues compared with older workers. For instance, odds ratios (OR) suggest that young workers had a 1.44 times higher likelihood [95%—confidence interval 1.21–1.70] of having no access to an occupational physician, and were more likely (2.22 [1.39–3.38]) to be unaware of legal OSH frameworks. Adjustment for selected employment conditions (company size, temporary contract) substantially reduced OR’s, indicating that these conditions contribute to differences between older and younger workers. We conclude that OSH management should pay particular attention to young workers in general and, to young workers in precarious employment, and working in small companies in particular
The interplay among age and employment status on the perceptions of psychosocial risk factors at work
Get PDFWhile the role of individual differences in shaping primary appraisals of psychosocial working conditions has been well investigated, less is known about how objective characteristics of the employee profile (e.g., age) are associated with different perceptions of psychosocial risk factors. Moreover, previous research on the link between employment status (i.e., work contract) and such perceptions has provided mixed results, leading to contradictory conclusions. The present study was conducted on a nationally representative sample of theItalian employed workforce surveyed with computer-assisted telephone interviewing (CATI) methodology. The principal aim of the study is to bridge this gap in the extant literature by investigating the interplay between two key characteristics of the employee profile (i.e., age and work contract) in shaping employees’ perceptions of psychosocial risk factors. Given the disparate literature scenario on the interplay between age and employment status in shaping primary appraisals of psychosocial stressors, we formulated and compared multiple competitive informative hypotheses. Consistent with the principles of the conservation of resources (COR) theory, we found that older contingent employees reported a higher level of psychosocial risk than their permanent peers who, in turn, were more vulnerable than middle-aged and younger workers (regardless of their employment status). These results highlight the importance of simultaneously assessing multipleobjective variables of the employee profile (i.e., age and employment status) which may act to shape subjective perceptions of psychosocial risk factors for work-related stress. Given our findings, employers and policy makers should consider older contingent employees as one of the workforce sub-populationsmost vulnerable to negative work environments
Work-related stress in the healthcare sector: a tailored psychosocial risk assessment approach
No full textIntroduction: One among the key aspects of a good psychosocial risks management is using approaches and validated tools tailored to specific critical aspects as size of organization, productive sector and workforce specificities. This can help in enabling practical impact and in developing effective action plans and fitting interventions. The Italian Workers’ Compensation Authority (INAIL) has started a process of contextualization of its methodology for the assessment and management of risks associated to work-related stress (Inail, 2013) in a at-risk sector as the healthcare one. In doing this, it was decided to use integrative measures for specific risks related to this context along with the standard measures used in all other settings.
This study aims to present the implementation of the methodology in two healthcare organisations where the tailored assessment tools were administered to employees in the last year. Starting from collected data, this study has the following objectives: 1) to investigate the psychometric properties of the tailored tools, with a particular focus on the new dimensions developed to identify specific risks; 2) to develop and test a new scoring system in which the tailored part could reweighting the risk level generally obtained by the standard measures.
Methods: Two large Italian health organizations have been involved in this study. The total sample is composed of 7,163 workers split into 123 work units. Two assessment phases were conducted: 1) a preliminary assessment where a Checklist was filled in for each work unit, as an organisational tool aimed to evaluate the conditions of risk through 3 different dimensions: sentinel events (possible outcomes of work-related stress), work content and work context factors; 2) A self-report questionnaire filled by employees and composed by the Management Standard Indicator tool and new additional measures corresponding to specific risks as emerged from the Literature and a previous pilot study (Balducci, 2016). Since all the standard measures and indicators have had a standardised system to obtain the risk level by the assessment, we decided to define and test proper criteria for the development of a new scoring system where the tailored part could contribute in reweighting the risk level emerged by the standard measures scoring system. This also allows to highlight the unique contribution of the tailored measures in identifying the risks of work stress in this context.
Results and Discussion: Findings show good quality of the tailored assessment measures in the healthcare sector and interesting relationship between the new and standard measures included in the risk assessment. The new scoring system will be presented in detail including comparison among the risk obtained by the standard measures and the unique contribution of the new tailored one. As output of this study a full tailored methodological proposal to the healthcare sectors will be offered to organisations
Improving working conditions and job satisfaction in healthcare. A study concept design on a participatory organizational level intervention in psychosocial risks management
Get PDFThis paper contributes to the literature on organizational interventions on occupational health by presenting a concept study design to test the efficacy of a Participatory Organizational level Intervention to improve working conditions and job satisfaction in Healthcare. The Participatory Organizational-level Intervention is developed using the Italian methodology to assess and manage psychosocial risks tailored to Healthcare. We added an additional step; evaluation, aiming to examine how the intervention works, what worked for whom in which
circumstances. This ongoing study is conducted in collaboration with two large Italian Hospitals (more than 7,000 employees). The study design comprises a quasi-experimental approach consisting of five phases and surveys distributed pre- and post-intervention aiming to capture improvements in working conditions and job satisfaction. Moreover, to evaluate the efficacy of the Intervention in terms of process and content, we use a realist evaluation to test Context-Mechanisms-Outcome (CMO) configurations. We collect contextual factors at baseline and during and post-intervention process data on the key principles of line manager support and employees participation. This study is expected to provide insights on methods and strategies to improve working conditions and employees’ job satisfaction and on national policies in the occupational health framework
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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