DUTCH MONITOR ON STRESS AND PHYSICAL LOAD - RISK-FACTORS, CONSEQUENCES, AND PREVENTIVE ACTION

Objectives-Due to recent changes in legislation on occupational health and safety, a national monitor on stress and physical load was develo ped in The Netherlands to monitor (a) risks and consequences of stress and physical load at work, (b) preventive actions in companies to red uce these risks, and (c) organisational and environmental variables th at facilitate preventive actions. Methods-Information was gathered fro m employers, employees, and employees' representatives. The monitor wa s used with a nationally representative sample of companies in industr y, wholesale trade, and banking and finance, 782 companies in total. R esults and conclusions-The information from the employees, aggregated at the company level, was not found to be correlated with that from th e employer from the same companies. Although many employers do recogni se risk factors for both physical load and stress as a problem they of ten seem to underestimate the problem when compared with employees or their representatives. This is particularly the case for psychosocial risk factors. Also, the perception of outcome measures, especially emp loyers who consider emotional exhaustion to be work related, were fewe r than the employees) representatives of the same organisation. Preven tive measures on physical load are much more popular than measures aga inst stress. It is the responsibility of the employer to take more pre ventive action of all kinds. They need to recognise risk factors as pr oblems and health outcomes to be related to work. Employees of larger companies should participate with employers to consider effective meas ures, and more use should be made of support at branch level. For spec ific preventive measures, specific predictors emerged. Except for meas ures to prevent work stress, information from employees did not suffic iently contribute to the initiation of preventive measures in the work place.