– Sir, Iochum, lawyer at the bar of Metz, does that mean that work is a place where employees are safe?
“Work generates its dangers, generates its difficulties, stressful situations. Sometimes, when the work is hard in industries or in construction, situations of physical danger. It also generates psychosocial risks. This new terminology is part of the legal order, we can have our work neighbor who creates relational stress for us all day long. The fundamental question is to know how employers should guarantee this safety at work and this is the subject of our symposium.“
What is the role of executives, managers, directors? How can they intervene, sound the alarm and put an end to a series of illnesses at work?
– There is a European charter on labor law that says the alpha and omega is thehe management compass in companies: it is prevention. So it is necessary upstream of the work processes in which the employees are registered and to think in a calm way, in a rational way and in a systematic way, to _how to avoid the pitfalls that will place employees in difficulty_physical difficulties if they are exposed to material dangers and psychological difficulties if they are exposed to relational stress.
Living well in business is something that is part of the preventive and not the curative. _Discussion processes must be set up in companies_processes of collective reflection which make it possible to avoid pitfalls in which, if the employer then falls, he risks convictions.
– Precisely, what are the very concrete signs that should alert?
We must consider with otherness the people around us, in a production process, a company. When we see that someone is not well, we must ask ourselves the question of the origin of the discomfort. Is it a malaise that is of professional origin? At this point, we must try when we are supervisors or when we are an employer, to ensure that we have remedial measures in relation to this and _reorganize the work process_, to reorganize the dialogue between people in the workplace, to reorganize company methodologies to ensure that people feel good there. There are studies that have been done that show that companies in which the well-being of employees is taken into account are more productive in the very medium term than companies in which these processes are neglected.
With the Covid, we saw that there was a new phenomenon that prevention had not seen coming at all, it is teleworking. There too, we find unease in the work?
Outsourced telework, the work of the company to be created, a new work environment on which our colloquium today will reflect. What can be done when employees are no longer physically present in the workplace to make sure they’re okay to make sure they’re safe? What are the risks and what are the issues around this? What are the bad habits of isolation that can be taken by employees that create psychosocial risks? We are effectively approaching a new field in which it is almost experimental, work outside of work.
What means does the employer have when he is not physically present with the employee to _bring him back to a situation of acceptability of his working conditions_? These are very new questions. These are questions that are not yet necessarily dealt with by law, since we are in a field that is largely experimental. I think that the important thing, and this is part of prevention, is to always maintain a listening link and an effective link and a link of attention with employees, even when they are not physically present. At work. So it’s processes to be invented, perhaps also and above all through social dialogue and collective bargaining.
Program of the symposium organized by Master Iochum with the support of the Mercy Foundation.