Percezione del rischio stress lavoro-correlato in un ente pubblico

[Autom. eng. transl.] It is known that stress can have significant consequences for the health of office workers1. Changes in the corporate structure can influence the perception of the work environment and cause an increase in the symptoms of "sick building syndrome" in workers2. We evaluated the work-related stress in a public body, at the time when it dealt with absorption in another institution. Method The 912 employees of the company were asked to complete the British HSE3 questionnaire, which was recently proposed by INAIL in the Italian version, for the assessment of the subjective perception of stress. 433 workers responded (47.5% of the total), of which 220 females (51%) and 213 males. The HSE questionnaire consists of 35 questions divided into the following sub-scales: • Demands (question), includes workload, work organization, work environment. • Control (control): ability to control one's own work. • Support (social support): includes the support provided by the management and that given by the work mates. • Relationship (workplace relations): the measures implemented to avoid conflicts. • Role (role): absence of role conflicts. • Change (changes), how transformations are managed and communicated. The answers are expressed according to a Likert scale in 5 levels, graded according to frequency or acceptance criteria. The stairs are constructed so as to indicate the main resources available to workers to combat stress. The reliability of the individual sub-scales, measured by Cronbach's alpha test, is between 0.66 and 0.82, and therefore can be considered good overall4. Results The overall score obtained from the questionnaire is higher than the values found in British companies and those measured in Italy. Analyzing the individual sub-scales, we observe that the social support is of the same level as the average recorded in the United Kingdom, while the workload is significantly lighter and the work control is greater. Interpersonal relationships are clearly better in the body under examination than controls. Joining the role is better than the average of British companies, but lower than that of the Italian healthcare company. The ability to adhere to change is greater than that of British workers and comparable to that of the workers of the Italian company of comparison. Conclusions The analysis of the occupational stress perceived by the workers of a public body at the time of a significant transformation did not show any particular alarm, compared with the average of the values measured in the surveys on British workers and in a healthcare company