Occupational psychosocial risks identification and assessment at Labour Offices in the Czech Republic

Abstract: Psychosocial risks at work can be defined as a set of risks resulting from the employee's interaction with the work environment, the nature and organization of work and interpersonal relationships both inside and outside the workplace. Data collection was provided through an online questionnaire survey in December 2021 in 5 selected Labour Offices in the Czech Republic. A special questionnaire was prepared and tailored to the needs of workers exposed to demanding communication with clients. This questionnaire survey was done after the pilot study to ensure the adequacy of the questions, comprehensiveness of the contents, and clearness of instructions. The questionnaire was divided into the mandatory part with Demographic data (7 questions), Work with the client (10 questions) and Resilience (10 questions). Optional areas of the questionnaire covered Communication with superior and team (9 questions), Nature of the work (8 questions), Work organization (9 questions), Job evaluation (5 questions), and Job change, digitalization and unexpected crises (4 questions). A total number of 1168 questionnaires were included for further analysis. The study group consisted of 93% women and 7% men. The biggest age group of respondents was between 50 to 64 years (33%). The results showed the highest satisfaction of employees in the area of communication at the workplace, whereas employees were most dissatisfied with work changes. For 58% of respondents, communication with the work team and superior impacted their job satisfaction. If there was a conflict or escalation of communication when dealing with a client at the counter at the Labour Office, only 1.7% of respondents stated that they had equipment at the workplace place to signalize and monitor the potentially dangerous clients. Our results demonstrated several very problematic areas of psychosocial risks at the workplaces of Labour Offices.Acknowledgements:This result was financially supported by institutional support for the long-term conceptual development of the research organization for the years 2018–2022 and it is a part of the research task 10-S4-2021-VÚBP “Possibilities for intervention measures for employees exposed to demanding communication with clients in public administration with a focus on employment offices”, solved by the Occupational Safety Research Institute in cooperation with the National Institute of Public Health in the years 2021–2023.This research was supported by the Ministry of Health of the Czech Republic - RVO(National Institute of Public Health - NIPH, 75010330)

Keywords: psychosocial risks, work, Labour Office

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1004100

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