FOL01_Risks at work
Unit 5. Organizational Risks
  • How many times have you heard about depression, stress or anxiety?

Professionally talking, all of them are caused by a bad organization of work by the company managers.

Office workers, mangers and teachers usually suffer from it.

5.1 Psychological and Organizational Risks

Psychological factors are as follows:

  • rhythm
  • work organization
  • working relationships

They can have important consequences for workers and for the company because a stressed worker means a loss of his/her work capability, what is also bad for the company.

These factors are related to business organization and culture and have the following effects:

FOR THE COMPANY / FOR WORKERS
Productive capacity decreases / Depression / Insomnia
Absenteeism / Fatigue / Stress
Loss of interest / Headache / Loss of appetite

Those effects are the consequence of:

  • Working shifts
  • Excessive working rhythm
  • Bad professional relationships and bad work environment
  • Lack of professional promotion
  • Lack of job stability
  • Boss style
  • Timetables
  • Absence of autonomy

What can you do to avoid these consequences? Discuss it in pairs.

Now, let’s check the recommended preventive measures in order to avoid stress.

PREVENTIVE MESURES

The actions taken to reduce organizational risks, should be:

  • Change working shifts
  • Make communications flow in your team
  • Reduce workload
  • Have a professional promotion system

To start practising the organizational risks learnt in this unit, you should do the following tasks:

TASK 1: Burnout or Boreout?

Click onthe following links and complete the table with the differences between the burnout and boreout causes. An example is given for you.

Burnout

/ Boreout
BURNOUT / BOREOUT
It is due to do a lot of different activities / It is due to monotonous activities

TASK 2: Mobbing

Click on the following link about mobbing and then do the tasks related to it.

/ Mobbing
  1. Try to write a definition of mobbing using your own words.
  1. Who is the candidate to be mobbed? Explain his/her characteristics.
  1. What is the typical mob profile?

Now check and compare your answers with your partner.

TASK 3: Identifying risks at work

Work in pairs.

Now that you already know all the working risks, complete the following table and identifythe risks related to the listed jobs.

You should ask each time if the worker is usually exposed to a working risk.

An example is given for you:

Is a carpenter usually exposed to noise? X YESNO

Is a carpenter usually exposed to high temperatures? YESX NO

In this table you have all the working risks learnt in this formative activity, from unit 1 to unit 5 in order to identify and choose those that affect the different jobs.

Also, you have the carpenter risks above as an example to follow.

Identifying risk table

FOL01_Risks at work / Unit 5