Managing Psychosocial Hazards and Work-Related Stress in Today's Work Environment

Rezensionen / Stimmen

"This is a chronicle of possibilities for U.S. workers and employers. Cobb's encyclopedic roadmap makes crystal clear what can and should be done. There's an international research-driven explosion of laws, codes, ordinances, and guides screaming that attention be paid to harmful PSH - psychosocial hazards in workplaces. Numerous Occupational Health and Safety agencies and professionals around the world advocate for inclusion of workers' psychological health in the list of employers' responsibilities, an expansion of the duty of care as currently practiced in the U.S. Rather than targeting workers for fixing, the book details that much of the rest of the world focuses on how to identify and mitigate work environment problems that create psychological injuries to workers.

This wonderful book throws down the gauntlet to challenge the U.S. to follow the paths of Nordic countries, Ireland, Spain, the UK, Canada, Australia, Mexico, Japan, and developing countries who have implemented ILO and ISO guidelines. The most innovative advances are attention to loneliness (UK), making return to work safer (South Australia), death from overwork (Japan), and a requisite disconnection from work outside work hours as enforced in several nations. Solutions do exist to take on the scourge of psychosocial hazards that are ignored in the U.S. Will employers here voluntarily redesign work, in response to the pandemic, to align themselves with their international counterparts? This book refutes the proffered excuse that they could not know what to do."
-Gary Namie, PhD., Co-founder & Director, Workplace Bullying Institute

"This is an incredibly rich primer for US organizations about the nature and seriousness of psychosocial hazards as a major occupational health and safety risk. Written in clear and accessible language, Cobb makes the case for the elevation of psychosocial hazards as an even more powerful driver than physical hazards of work-related stress and the impact on employee and thus organizational health and well-being. Grounded in an examination of prevention and mitigation approaches of a number of countries, Cobb identifies specific steps that US companies can and should take to help their employees and thus, their organizations thrive."
-Loraleigh Keashly Ph.D., Professor, Communication; Associate Dean, Curricular & Student Affairs, College of Fine, Performing and Communication Arts; Distinguished Service Professor, Wayne State University

"Ellen Pinkos Cobb has built on her global comprehension of employment law and policy to offer a smart analysis of psychosocial hazards in the modern American workplace and how to respond to them. This welcomed framing of health, mistreatment, and stress at work ultimately prevails upon U.S. employers to embrace a fuller duty of care for their workers. Especially when one adds COVID to the "pre-existing conditions" confronting the world of work, this book arrives at an opportune time."
-David C. Yamada, Professor of Law and Director, New Workplace Institute, Suffolk University Law School, Boston, MA

"A new book on workplace psychological hazards and laws has been published. The book is 'Managing Psychosocial Hazards and Work-Related Stress in Today's Work Environment - International Insights for US Organizations' written by Ellen Pinkos Cobb...Many occupational health and safety-related books written in the United States suffer from American parochialism. Cobb's book is written for US organisations to show what workplace health and safety achievements are possible. The book is a very good summary of international changes in workplace psychosocial hazards.

Part 2 of the book contains international insights and examples. This is the research 'meat' of the book, showing what other countries are doing about the hazard. Cobb is writing for the US readership, and this section of the book could be revelatory to the open-minded US reader.

Part 3 includes suggestions for the US to change...The prevention of psychosocial harm in workplaces is a work in progress. Some nations are more progressive than others, and Cobb's book describes this situation well. The biggest impediment to progress on this hazard in Australia, as in the US, is the lack of political or organisational will to change.

Although it is published by a largely academic publisher, the book deserves a broader US readership as it shows how the world of work in many other Westernised countries, some in security and trade pacts with the US, have jumped past the US on OHS and psychosocial health."
-Kevin Jones, OHS Consultant and Freelance Writer, Editor of the SafetyAtWorkBlog, Australia