The Greek worker has to shoulder more burdens in less time, according to the latest report of the Labor Institute (INE) of the GSEE on employment, which was based on the results of the Institute’s research.

The Employment Advisor at the Regional Branch of INE GSEE, Manos Petrakis, speaking to APE-MBE, explains that workers in our country face the problem of intensifying their work, while at the same time they are unable to control the flow of the process as over 56% of employees is forced to work on tight deadlines.

This fact, as he mentions, combined with the impossibility of controlling the deadlines and terms of delivery of tasks creates an incredibly stressful climate.

The above intensifies even more when relations in the working environment are unfavorable and unsupportive, when conflicts increase and employees are employed on short-term fixed-term contracts, an element that multiplies the pressure and creates a lack of professional perspective.

High-risk industries and occupations

On the occasion of a legal information and professional counseling workshop held by the INE of GSEE on work stress, in the context of the 88th International Exhibition of Thessaloniki, the Employment Consultant, political scientist and scientific associate at the central branch of the Institute in Athens, Vassilis Rizos, points out to APE – MEP that an ELSTAT survey carried out in 2020 on psychosocial factors, accidents and health problems related to work, revealed that high-risk sectors for mental health are those of construction, hotels, catering and education.

As far as professions are concerned, higher risk face the machine operators and in fact at a rate of 70%, followed by those employed in the provision of services as well as sellers.

Commenting on the relevant finding, he estimates that in terms of human interaction with each other, in the case of machine operators, on the one hand, human interaction and social support during the performance of tasks are lacking, while on the other hand, workers in the provision of services and sale are very strongly exposed to human interaction and contact, with the consequence that they have an increased need to discharge.

The problem isn’t individual – It’s about the modern workplace

Mr. Petrakis clarifies that the problem of work stress is not individual, but concerns the modern workplace. For his part, Mr. Rizos characterizes as wrong the mentality that exists that mental resilience is about mental toughness and endurance, cold dealing with things and endurance in more difficult conditions. “Man is not something that can absorb a lot of energy until it breaks. We don’t want it to break. From his side, an organization does not want to have people who after some time will break, but people who will be able to recover, through their support and the creation of new meaning,” he adds.

How much does an employee experiencing severe work stress cost a company?

“How much does an employee who experiences intense work stress and reduced efficiency cost a company? There is this equation in the matter of stress. If we put the efficiency and stress factors into the equation, we see that initially, as stress increases, so does efficiency, but from a certain point on, efficiency decreases.

Therefore the increased stress it leads to a decrease in efficiency and I wonder how much an employee with signs of burnout costs the company and how the company can prevent this to remain as productive

For example, in a work group of 8 people, in which no work stress prevention measures were taken and no one reported any issue of increased workload or stress, the management may not know anything and 3 out of 8 workers are not productive due to burnout .

In this case, it will be necessary for the remaining 5 to work for all 3 and the company must take measures”, says Mr. Rizos.

How can the problem be addressed?

At the level of dealing with the problem of work stress and work burnout, Mr. Rizos clarifies that the interventions work at three levels: that of the organization, that of the interaction of the organization with the individual and that of information and counseling on behalf of the INE of GSEE to the workers.

It first highlights the need to change the institutional framework to treat stress as an occupational disease.

An important first step has already been taken with decision 1358 of 2019 of the Single-Member Court of First Instance of Athens, which has attributed a heart attack suffered by an employee who was going to work, to stressful situations experienced for a period of more than five months and with the systematic characteristics of insecurity for the continuation of work, the uncertainty of changing tasks, constant changes and increasing workload. So. the court decided that the work stress experienced by this man was the factor that led to his death, recorded the event as a work accident and decided to pay compensation of 160,000 for the mental suffering of the family.

On a secondary level, the Employment Consultant points out: “the issue is what the company itself does to inform employees of the risks that exist, to organize the framework of the tasks, to prevent cases of overload, to work in the direction of prevention and conflict management, to form cooperative relationships. Then the question is what does it do after the phenomenon is established.”

One of the recommended actions to deal with conflicts in the workplace is to identify them by the occupational doctor or to create a system to monitor the relations between the employees in order to strengthen cooperation.

The level of tertiary intervention includes the intervention at the individual level by the Information and Counseling Network of Workers and the Unemployed of the GSEE Institute, which has 12 branches in 13 regions and 9 staff members while organizing individual and group information and counseling actions, either live , either online, but also of legal support for the country’s workforce. There is also the possibility of the Institute intervening in unions and workers’ associations in order to put pressure on the company.

In this way, according to Mr. Petrakis, “the individual is supported to identify the stressful factors and manage to develop actions that have to do with the management of the working environment and the ability of mental resilience”.

How job counseling works

In terms of tertiary intervention and labor counseling, employee support is directed towards:

  • self-care (medical follow-up, physical exercise)
  • leisure activities (leaves, sociability in the workplace, contact with nature),
  • social support (through participation in social contexts or communities) and
  • the development of cognitive skills (for conflict management, time management, and organizing a daily schedule). These skills are cultivated either with the help of the consultant or through the employee’s participation in professional training and education activities.

Businesses do not invest in in-house training

According to Mr. Petraki and Rizo, from surveys by the INE of GSEE and from other surveys, it appears that in the last 20 years companies do not invest in in-house training and this has too many adverse effects, as it does not help the development of the employee and the creation of skills to face new challenges . They underline the need for businesses to examine this specific issue, as, as they state, “it is not possible to solve a social problem on individual terms”.