CASES IN STRESS PREVENTION - THE SUCCESS OF A PARTICIPATIVE AND STEPWISE APPROACH

Stress prevention programmes are predominantly reactive and aimed at i ndividuals. Four factors that may contribute to this current status ar e discussed: the opinions and interests of company management, the nat ure of psychology, the difficulty of conducting methodologically 'soun d' intervention studies and the denominational segregation of stress r esearch. To increase the impact of organizational level interventions, the effects need to be demonstrated on matters that appeal to company management, such as quality of products and services, organizational flexibility, productivity and sickness absence rates. The demonstratio n of examples of good preventive practice is considered as a conditio sine qua non for developing effective stress prevention procedures and for the involvement of both social partners in this held. Therefore, 10 Dutch projects from several branches of industry, aimed at the redu ction of work stress, physical workload and sickness absenteeism, were selected, analysed and compared. The results show that in most cases sickness absenteeism was reduced and that the benefits exceeded the co sts of the interventions. Five factors seem to be at the heart of a su ccessful approach: (1) its stepwise and systematic nature, (2) an adeq uate diagnosis or risk analysis, (3) a combination of measures (i.e. b oth work-directed and person-directed), (4) a participative approach ( i.e. worker involvement) and (5) top management support. In conclusion , the projects suggest that stress prevention may be beneficial to bot h the employee and the organization. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.