Companies are required to protect mental health

A number of factors can have a positive or negative effect on mental health in the workplace. Good working conditions promote employees’ well-being and sense of self-worth. Unfavourable working arrangements, excessive workloads, mobbing, sexual harassment or substance abuse, on the other hand, are risk factors. In a worst-case scenario they can cause mental and physical problems and impede the employee’s natural resources, which in turn impairs their performance and ultimately harms the company too. According to the “Good Work Barometer” recorded every year by the employee association Travail.Suisse and Bern University of Applied Sciences, in 2021 almost 45 per cent of employees stated that they often feel stressed by their work. This is a new record with serious consequences. The Job Stress Index recorded by the Health Promotion Switzerland foundation showed that in 2020 workplace-related costs due to stress totalled CHF 7.6 billion. Stress is caused by a perceived imbalance between a person’s workload and their individual resources. Employers should therefore ensure at the start of an employment contract that the associated tasks and procedures are suitable for the employee.

The Employment Act and the Code of Obligations require employers to take all necessary measures to protect the physical and mental health of their employees. Psychosocial risks include structural features of the employment situation such as the way working hours are organised or how communication happens within the company. It is also important to evaluate working conditions regularly in periodic performance reviews or by discussing problems at meetings. This enables managers to identify and deal with possible indicators of excessive psychological stress at an early stage. The cantonal labour inspectorates regularly review occupational health in the same way as they inspect occupational safety. This includes protection of mental health. “The labour inspectorates check whether companies in Switzerland have the internal structures needed to protect health,” says Chris­tophe Iseli from the Federal Labour Inspectorate at SECO, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs. “In terms of mental health this includes, for example, designating an office to which employees can turn with problems such as mobbing or sexual violence.” Larger companies often have their own structures, while smaller companies may commission external offices with such tasks. The latter also ensure that contacts are neutral, something that is particularly important where psychosocial risks are involved.

Health in the workplace is one of eight goals set out in the Federal Council’s strategy “Health2030”. Great importance is attached to the development and implementation of preventive measures that produce measurable effects on psychosocial stress in the workplace. The FOPH supports various projects aimed at protecting employees’ health – not least in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has greatly changed working conditions in many places, with both positive and negative effects. The mental health platform www.dureschnufe.ch was set up in response to the pandemic (avail­able in German only). It offers tips for working from home, strategies against isolation and an overview of resources for those affected.