When stress-related diseases are increasing, the preventive work becomes increasingly important. The aim with this essay is to determine established law about psychosocial working environment. With the legal dogmatic method, an investigation has been made about the law on working conditions and what it says about preventive work to the psychosocial working environment. After a profound investigation regarding the frameworks pros and cons, it is possible to draw the conclusion that the law on working environment should keep the character of framework. Even if this entails difficulties with interpretation, it is not suitable to regulate the details in a law that should be appropriate for every profession. By studying the regulations of Swedish Work Environment Authority, the law is clarified. However, they should also clarify the concepts, which the law refers to, in order to know when the law should be applied. The same problem occurs when an analysis is made of the declaration forms of accidents and incidents. As a consequence of a weakly formulated definition of “serious incident”, problems arise when applying the law. How stress-related incidents should be treated is also weakly formulated, which could complicate and delay the preventive work. This is because the employers only know that they should report the diseases but not the incidents.

Arbete och hälsa är centrala ämnen i dagens samhälle och det ställs högre krav på anpassning och flexibilitet för människorna idag. Minskade ekonomiska resurser och omstruktureringar skapar osäkerhet i samhället och dess befolkning vilket i sin tur ger utslag på folkhälsan (Folkhälsoinstitutet, 1999). Tidigare forskning inom området har visat att miljön på vår arbetsplats i hög grad kan påverka individens hälsa då en stor del av livet tillbringas i just arbetsmiljön. Upplevelser och känsla av sammanhang, ledarskap, motivation och stress är viktiga faktorer, som gör att jag vill belysa denna problematik, som finns inom detta område. Syftet med denna studie var att undersöka vilken betydelse ledarskap/ledarstilen har på medarbetarnas motivation och stress inom deras psykosociala arbetsmiljö. Material och metod som användes var av kvalitativ karaktär i form av intervjuer. Materialinsamlingen genomfördes på ett medelstort serviceföretag inom flygbranschen i södra Sverige med 150 anställda varav sju intervjuer genomfördes. Resultatet ifrån denna studie visade att medarbetarna upplever att ledarens ledarstil har en inverkan på medarbetarnas motivation och stress inom den psykosociala arbetsmiljön. Slutsatsen blev att ledarens ledarstil bör situationanpassas efter rådande förhållanden då de anställda arbetar i en händelserik miljö som kräver god kommunikation, information samt en ledare, som arbetar aktivt inom den psykosociala arbetsmiljön. Genom att tillämpa ovanstående faktorer ökar individens arbetsmotivation och stressorerna i arbetsmiljön kan minskas. / Work and health are central subjects in today’s society and today people are faced with higher expectations on being flexible and able to adapt to new situations. A constraint on resources and restructuring creates uncertainty in society and for its population which in turn inflicts on the general public health (Folkhälsoinstitutet, 1999). Past investigations within this area show us that the environment at work can highly influence the individuals’ health because of all the time that we spend in that environment. Experience, sense of coherence, leadership, motivation and stress are all factors that play a big role in this part and that’s what I want to highlight and discuss in this study. The aim of this study is to investigate the meaning of the leadership on co-workers motivation and stress in their psychosocial working environment. The material and method used was qualitative interviews. The data collection was done at a midsized private service company in the airline industry in southern Sweden with 150 employees and seven interviews were done. The result of this study showed that the co-workers believed that the leadership had an influence on their motivation and stress factors in their psychosocial working environment. The conclusion of this study was that the style of leadership should be customised for the current situation since the employees work in a hectic environment which requires good communication skills, information and a leader which actively works on psychosocial working environment issues. By applying the factors mentioned above the leader will increase the employee’s motivation and the negative stress related factors in the work environment will decrease.

Abstract   Hansson, A. (2017). The experience of demands, control and social support among a group of health care providers in Central Sweden - a cross sectional study. Bachelor thesis in Public Health Science. Department of Occupational and Public Health Science. Faculty of Health and Occupational Studies. University of Gävle, Sweden. Background: In Sweden, employees who work within health and social care is the largest occupational group and is also the group which accounts for the highest number of illness cases. Work in health care often means a variety of psychosocial workloads such as high demands, low control and lack of social support. Aim: The aim of the study was to examine the experiences and/or presence of demands, control and social support among nurses and home care workers in their daily work in health care in a municipality in central Sweden. Method: The study included 44 participants, 12 nurses and 32 home care workers. In a quantitative cross-sectional study, data was collected by use of a questionnaire designed by the author for the aim of the study. Participants reported their age, gender, working years and working hours, and answered questions about the experience and/or presence of demands, control and social support in their daily work. Results: The majority of the respondents experienced social support at their workplace. However, respondents 44 years or younger, did rarely/did not experience high work demands from managers or colleagues. Employees who worked more irregular hours experienced more often that they achieved expectations of what should be done from the care takers and their relatives. Respondents who had worked as caregivers 10 years or more, felt that their working hours were governed by the needs of care taker. Conclusion: The results show that an inadequate psychosocial work environment, with high demands, low control and lack of social support, was not experienced and/or a present problem among the majority of the respondents. Further research and knowledge is needed on how the perception of demands, control and social support at work has an impact on the self-perceived health of municipal employees within the health care sector since the work leave due to illness in this sector in Sweden continues to rise. Keywords: Demand, control and support, Public Health, Psychosocial Working Environment.

Att arbeta inom socialtjänsten som socialsekreterare inom utredningsenheten för barn och unga kan anses vara ett stressigt arbete med hög arbetsbelastning samt att deras arbetsmiljö ofta är omtalad. Syftet med studien var att undersöka vilka faktorer som socialsekreterare inom utredningsenheten för barn och unga upplevde kunde påverka deras psykosociala arbetsmiljö. Studien byggde på kvalitativa intervjuer och resultatet analyserades utifrån kravkontroll- och stödmodellen. Resultatet visade att socialt stöd är en viktig komponent för att må bra i rollen som socialsekreterare. De slutsatser som vi kan dra genom denna studie är att det finns obalans mellan de krav som ställs på socialsekreterare och de resurser som finns att tillgå. Förutsättningarna behöver bli bättre för att socialsekreterarna inte ska bli utsatta för stress och ohälsa och på så sätt få en bättre psykosocial arbetsmiljö. / To work as a social worker within investigations at social services specialized in children and young adults is assumed to be stressful with a high workload. Consequently, their working environment is often discussed. Therefore, the aim of this paper was to investigate what factors social workers, working under these circumstances, perceive as affecting their psychosocial working environment. This study was based on qualitative interviews and the result is analyzed with help of the demand- control- and support model. The result indicates that social support is an important component to consider in order for social workers to be healthy in their roles. The circumstances need to improve to prevent social workers from being exposed to stress and unhealthiness, and thereby improving their psychosocial working environment. Our conclusion from this study is that there is an imbalance between the requirements asked from social workers and the resources available.

I studien undersöks hur införandet av ett systematiskt arbetsmiljöarbete kan påverka en organisation. Många arbetsplatser saknar ett fungerande systematiskt arbetsmiljöarbete, men alla företag är beroende av att personalen mår bra och får vara frisk och därmed kan vara effektiv på sitt arbete. För att öka läsarens förståelse för hur betydelsefullt det är att arbeta aktivt med arbetsmiljöarbete, vill vi visa organisationer hur de genom detta kan uppnå vinster, inte bara de av rent monetär art, utan även de som är av betydande vikt för arbetstagarna, såsom exempelvis ökad trivsel och bättre gemenskap. Studien är av kvalitativ karaktär med en interaktiv forskningsprocess. Urvalet har bestått av respondenter på Copy Syd AB. Resultatet visar att det är av stor vikt att införa ett systematiskt arbetsmiljöarbete. Studien pekar på att lönsamhet bland annat kan uppnås i form av nöjda medarbetare som anser att implementeringen av det systematiska arbetsmiljöarbetet har bidragit till ökad trivsel och effektivitet. De vinster som kan göras i en organisation kan kanske inte alltid mätas i pengar, men om de anställda upplever att deras arbetssituation förbättrats avsevärt både ur fysiskt och psykosocialt hänseende, måste det anses vara vinster av lika stor eller större betydelse. I studien framkommer även att det är möjligt att urskilja effekter på tre nivåer: individ-, organisations- och samhällsnivå. / This study examines how the implementation of a systematic work environment management can affect an organization. Many places do not work systematically with the working environment although companies are very dependent of the wellbeing and health of their co-workers as this increases their effectiveness. The aim is to increase the understanding of how important it is to actively address the social and physical environment in a company. We want to show organizations how they can gain profit, not only financially, but through the wellbeing and effectiveness of their employees long-term. The study is qualitative to its disposition and uses an interactive process of research. The sample consisted of respondents from the company Copy Syd AB. The result shows that the implementation of a systematic work environment management is of great importance to the company and its employees. As the study indicates there are positive effects from satisfied co-workers who think that the implementation has contributed to an increased job satisfaction as well as increased efficiency at work. The profit might not always be financial, but if the co-workers experience that their work situation, both physically and psychosocially, is considerably better than before, this profit must be considered as great, or even greater importance than mere economy. In the study it also emerges that it is possible to distinguish effects on three levels: for the individual, for the organization and for the society.