Over the past decade, focus has expanded beyond physical health and safety risks towards a more encompassing ‘well-being at work’ approach associated with psychosocial factors. This is consistent with the World Health Organization (WHO) definition of health as ‘a state of wellbeing’. The focus on well-being includes psychosocial risk factors that may cause both psychological and physical diseases. Absences and, in the most serious cases, incapacity to work are the main effects of poor health and well-being, while poor personal motivation at work negatively affects firms’ performance because of lower productivity and increased turnover. Violence and harassment at work are increasingly seen as an important part of the psychosocial risk factors affecting individual health and well-being.
2015.02 Violence and harassment in European workplaces, Extent, impacts and policies – Eurofound