THE International Labor Organization (ILO) reports that more than 840,000 workers die each year from health conditions linked to psychosocial risks, including long working hours, job insecurity, workplace harassment, and bullying.
In its study, titled “The psychosocial working environment: Global developments and pathways for action,” ILO found that today’s jobs are designed, organized and managed in such a way that they have a major impact on worker health and safety.
Simply put, the psychosocial risks are built-in issues that contribute to a toxic working environment.
“Psychosocial risks are becoming one of the most significant challenges of occupational safety and health (OSH) in the modern world of work,” said Manal Azzi, ILO team leader on OSH policy and systems. “Improving the psychosocial working environment is essential not only for protecting workers’ mental and physical health, but also for strengthening productivity, organizational performance and sustainable economic development.”
The figures cited by ILO are eye-openers:
– Psychosocial risks lead to the loss of nearly 45 million disability-adjusted life years each year.
– 1.37 percent of the global gross domestic product is lost annually due to cardiovascular disease and mental disorders associated with psychosocial risk factors.
– 35 percent of workers work more than 48 hours a week.
– 25 percent of workers have experienced at least one form of violence or harassment.
In its own study, another United Nations agency, the World Health Organization (WHO), found that more than half of the world’s workers are in the informal economy, where they are exposed to “unsafe working environments, work long hours, have little or no access to social or financial protections and face discrimination, all of which can undermine mental health.”
Khalid Hassan, ILO country director for the Philippines, adds a deeper dimension in probing psychosocial risks in the country’s workplaces.
For Hassan, the issue “is not simply how many jobs we create, but the conditions under which people work.”
Today, psychosocial problems are still treated as secondary labor concerns. “In reality, they sit at the center of some of the most serious labor challenges.”
In fishing, aquaculture and mining — sectors where work can be remote, informal and weakly regulated — psychosocial pressures “combine with economic vulnerability to create conditions where exploitation can take root. Isolation, debt, unstable income and pressure to produce can trap workers in abusive situations.”
“Where oversight is weak and workers lack voice, the line between poor working conditions and forced labor can become dangerously thin,” Hassan said.
The impact of psychosocial risks on the household is equally concerning. “When adults are unable to secure stable and decent work, children are often drawn into labor — particularly in agriculture, small-scale mining and informal services,” he added.
Psychosocial hazards do not only concern work-related stress — “they are part of the pathway that can lead to forced labor and child labor.”
Hassan credits the Philippine government for taking an important step by ratifying the Violence and Harassment Convention, 2019 (No. 190). It is “a clear commitment to ensure that work is free from violence and harassment — whether physical, psychological or economic,” he said.
Philippine labor and occupational safety and health laws already provide protection for the workers’ physical and mental well-being. The bigger challenge is strictly enforcing these laws.
“Without this, progress risks remaining uneven,” Hassan said.
To be effective, protecting workers’ psychosocial well-being must be a commitment shared by employees and employers.
Management must have in place a risk assessment mechanism to identify psychosocial hazards, and ensure managers and supervisors are competent or trained to deal with such risks.
Employees, meanwhile, must abide by policies or procedures for dealing with psychosocial hazards, and bring any issues that make them unable to manage or do their work to their employer’s attention
“Work must not come at the cost of dignity. Ensuring this is not only a social obligation; it is [also] essential for strengthening labor market performance, sustaining investor confidence and maintaining the Philippines’ credibility in an increasingly standards-driven global economy.”
WHO considers a safe and healthy working environment not only as a fundamental right, but as the ideal setting that minimizes tension and conflicts, “and improves staff retention, work performance and productivity.”
