How to succeed with organizational and social work environment efforts

Today, most companies have good routines for systematic work environment management when it comes to the physical work environment. But the concept also includes the organizational and social work environment. Regardless of whether you work from a health-promoting, preventive or rehabilitative perspective, a good organizational and social work environment is of the utmost importance.

What is meant by the physical work environment is clear to most people – but what does organizational and social work environment actually mean? The organizational work environment includes management and governance, communication, participation and room for action, distribution of tasks, as well as demands, resources and responsibilities. The social work environment refers to how we are affected by the people around us at work.

Systematic work environment management should be a continuous process. This means that companies must examine the work environment, assess risks, take measures and then follow up to ensure that the measures have had an effect.

Below, we have based our text on the Swedish Work Environment Authority’s regulations regarding the organizational and social work environment (AFS 2015:4) and listed the most important points, as well as described how you as an employer should work with them.

Knowledge. Managers and supervisors must have knowledge of how to prevent and manage unhealthy workload, but also the conditions needed to put this knowledge into practice. By conditions we mean, for example, sufficient authority, a reasonable workload and support in their role as manager or supervisor. Managers have a major impact on the work environment, well-being, stress and work performance of employees. In turn, managers are greatly influenced by the organizational conditions that exist for exercising good leadership.

Goals. A clear description of goals that is known to all employees is important for improving health and motivation among staff. Vague goals can mean high demands at work and uncertainty about how or in what way the goals are to be achieved. Another important health-promoting factor is clear roles at work. This means that the employee knows the content of their tasks, what is to be done and who is responsible for what.

Workload. It is important that the employer adapts resources to the demands of the work and is attentive to any imbalance between these so that they do not risk being repeated or becoming long-term. As an employer, you must be alert to signals that indicate an unhealthy workload. You can then quickly take measures such as reducing demands or adding resources. Examples of measures to prevent unhealthy workload can be: reducing the amount of work, changing the order of priorities, varying tasks, providing opportunities for recovery, applying different ways of working, increasing staffing or adding knowledge.