21/06/2007
The World Health Organisation (WHO) has recently published a booklet on stress at the workplace. It aims at raising awareness for employers and worker representatives of work-related stress in developing countries. Work-related stress is an issue of growing concern in developing countries due to processes of globalization and the changing nature of work. Raising awareness at an early stage seems all the more important because work-related stress is also a problem which is far from being resolved in developed and industrialized countries. Traditionally, the focus of Occupational Health and Safety initiatives is on chemical, biological and physical exposures, while the psychosocial risks at work are still largely neglected and their causes and consequences still insufficiently understood as they pertain to the developing country context. The current division between working conditions and the (physical) work environment makes the inclusion of the psychosocial risks at work harder to identify by most of the Occupational Health and Safety professionals.

• To download the booklet