THE RIGHT TO REGULATE STRESS AT WORK!

Ruud Kuin

28 november 2008

Jan Willem DietenTUNED/EUPAN Stockholm

16 september 2009

Stress at work is everywherein fact it’s simple

the balance must be there

Workload Employee Dutiability

Some figures about the Netherlands:* 16.000.000 inhabitants* 120.000 civil servants working directly for what we call the National Administration of whom:

* 30.000 in the tax department* 20.000 in prisons* 20.000 in Justice Dep.incl.Courts* 20.000 in legislating and policymaking * 20.000 in maintenace and control on Safety,Health, Education, Food, Labour, Economie * 10.000 in maintenance and control on trafic on the raod,water and in the air

The Dutch Social Culture (Poldermodel):

* Social Partners working together* Negociations until we agree or until

the first or both fall asleep* Strong: interests of both sides recognised* Weak: Compromises on each detail* Mostly not: I give you 100% on two of your

favorit wishes and you give me 100% on two of my favorit wishes

* Also a long time non-obliging antistress policy

The collective NA-agreement 2005/2006

• Make good practices in situations with real problems: established unbalance

• Give the employees the right to regulate the workload themselves

• The manager is obliged to restore the balance• Possible messures: more employees, less work,

change of processes or organisation, the right and duty of the manager to give back a part of his charge to his manager.

Pilots on stress on work

we did look for:* relevancy, also in the bigger departments* quantitatively measurable production and structured working processes* People who want to work on it* We started 8 pilots of which 2 in the finance-department and 3 in prisons

Prison Project OPI -1-

• Optimalisation Input of Personal • How much work should be done (gross)

– Quality, Quantity, Working-proces

• How many work can any employee furfill?– Working hours, Rest, Education, Personal

affairs, Illnes, Holliday, Work-council, Trade-union, Fitness, (Inevitable) inefficiency

• Conclusion:How much staff (quality and quantity) is required?

Prison-pilot OPI -2-

More specific:• Which qualifications are obliged for each task• Which schudules are sound, safe and social attractive?• How do we operationalise “safe”, “sound”, “social

attractive”?• Yes we can or …??• The pilot just started, we will see

Prison-pilot OPI -3-Where do we start?• Do we use it to improve sound, social attractive

and complete schedules and jobs?• Than: Quality and quantity of work and jobs lead

to the price!

• Do we use it because we want to cut costs?• Than: The political price leads to workstress and

lack of quality for employees, prisoners and society!

Conclusion? The succes of each pilot depends of the

way the social dialogue functions:Are we both independant enough to

conclude about quality of work and live for employees, prisoners and society?

Let we swim them, or let we drown them?