Promoting the Psychosocial Work Environment through the WHO Global Framework on Healthy Workplaces

Within the WHO Global Plan of Action for Workers’ Health, countries and international stakeholders have expressed a need for a globally coherent framework for planning, delivery and evaluation of essential interventions for workplace health protection and promotion. The WHO Healthy Workplaces framework defines an approach for planning and delivering workplace interventions and for evaluating overall benefits, including measures of cost effectiveness.     The presentation will focus on the promotion of the psychosocial work environment through the Psychosocial Risk Management Excellence Framework (PRIMA-EF). PRIMA-EF aims to promote harmonization in the area of psychosocial risk management and enhance best practice by providing detailed recommendations and evidence-based guidance that will enable stakeholders (occupational health and safety professionals, policy makers, employers, trade unions, employees) to implement them to improve the quality of working life.     PRIMA-EF was developed by a consortium of WHO collaborating centres in occupational health with the support of a number of key stakeholders. Key aspects of the framework include psychosocial risk assessment, social dialogue, stakeholder involvement and interventions. A number of methods were used in this project and included policy reviews, stakeholder surveys, semi-structured interviews, focus groups and a Delphi survey.