Finland Times

Two Finnish workplaces performed well in an international competition organised by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work that focused on ways of managing stress and psychosocial risks in workplaces, said a press release issued on Monday.

One of the award winning workplaces is Fastems Oy Ab, which has determinately built up an organisation culture that supports staff wellbeing and team spirit.

The project to change the organization culture has involved the company's whole staff, both in Finland and abroad.

Fastems operates in the field of factory automation.

Working together with the occupational health care, Fastems has every year selected a target group among its workers and systematically mapped out their experiences by asking 'what works well', 'what does not work', 'what should we develop'.

The survey has been followed by joint efforts to establish what could be done to best reduce the sense of work burden, and related development measures have then been agreed on.

 The company's performance has improved hand in hand with improved wellbeing at work.

The Satakunta Hospital District received an honorary mention. Since 2008, the Hospital District has worked on the development of its own wellbeing programme which is now on its third programme period.

The programme focuses on the smooth functioning of work and ways of enabling it. The aim is that each employee takes responsibility for maintaining his or her ability to work and that the employer actively

promotes both physical and psychological wellbeing.

Psychological risk factors have been included in the assessment of occupational health and safety risks and they are charted in staff self-evaluations carried out in different units, according to the release.

Due to the systematic development process of the Satakunta Hospital District, sick absences and occupational accidents have taken a downward turn while job satisfaction has improved.

The competition makes part of the Healthy Workplaces campaign, with the theme 'Manage Stress' in 2014-2015.