Risk factors in the psychosocial working environment – what increases the risk of mental wear and tear?
Two workplaces can face the same distressing incident and come out of it very differently. One has prepared, sends no one out alone and follows up afterwards. At the other, an employee is left alone with the task at the end of a shift and drives straight home. The difference rarely lies in how resilient the employees are. It lies in the conditions surrounding the work.
Workplaces can use this knowledge before something goes wrong. Here, you can learn what a risk factor is, which risk factors exist in psychologically demanding work, and how you can use this knowledge in prevention.
What is a risk factor in the psychosocial working environment?
A risk factor is a characteristic of the incident, the task or the person that increases the likelihood of an employee being negatively affected by their work. The opposite is a protective factor: a condition that prevents things from getting worse or makes a positive outcome more likely.
A protective factor cannot remove the risk. But it can reduce the impact of strain and cushion the blow. That is why it makes sense to look at both at the same time.
Knowledge about risk factors is based on research and statistics. It tells us how many employees are highly likely to react under certain conditions. It cannot predict how Hanne or Ahmed in particular will react to this particular task. Risk factors are therefore a tool for sharpening attention and planning work wisely, not a method for sorting employees.
There is no fixed formula for how much it takes. Each workplace has to assess for itself how its work is best organised.
Risk factors in the work itself and in incidents
In the most psychologically demanding professions, the simple answer to what causes strain is distressing incidents. The risk increases with the number of incidents and with how severe they are. A number of characteristics of the incident make a particular difference:
- Duration. A sudden, violent incident strikes while your guard is down. Repeated strain over a long period can build up unnoticed until one incident becomes one too many. Read more about cumulative strain.
- Risk of recurrence. An incident that is likely to happen again increases the sense of powerlessness.
- Incidents without closure. When a case remains unresolved, or when the person being helped continues to suffer, it places ongoing demands on the professionals involved.
- Threats. Threats are a serious psychological strain, even when “nothing happened”.
- Human-caused incidents. Violence, abuse and neglect deliberately inflicted by someone cause more strain than accidents and natural events. They raise questions of evil, guilt and responsibility.
- Children and people you know. Seeing a child or a colleague suffer makes a particularly strong impression.
- Many people involved. The more people who are injured, the harder it is to keep an overview and reach everyone.
- Strong sensory impressions. The sight of serious injuries, sounds, smells and noise intensify the impact.
- Unannounced incidents. Something that happens without warning, in a place that is normally safe, catches you unprepared.
It is not only distressing incidents that count. Factors such as high emotional demands, heavy workload and conflicting demands are also well-known risk factors in everyday work.
Risk factors in the way work is organised
The incident itself can rarely be changed. The way it is handled can. This is where many of the risk factors lie that the workplace itself can influence.
Working alone. Being part of a well-functioning team is one of the strongest protective factors. When you are left alone with a difficult task, you are more vulnerable. “There are always two people in an ambulance and always two people in a police car. They have a partner. As a doctor, you are often completely alone,” as one doctor puts it.
Unclear tasks and roles. When it is unclear who is responsible and what is expected, it is difficult to make a good plan and have realistic expectations of yourself. This increases the risk of being dissatisfied with your own performance afterwards.
Caseload. The more traumatised citizens, patients or clients you meet, the greater the strain.
Time of day. An abrupt transition between private life and work makes you more vulnerable. This is intensified if the day begins or ends with a particularly difficult task.
A manager under pressure. A manager’s well-being has a significant impact on that of their employees. A stressed manager is therefore in itself a risk factor for the whole team.
Being forced to stand by passively. Being active and able to influence the situation has a protective effect. Witnessing the suffering of others without being able to do anything is a serious risk factor. This applies, for example, to the student who stands by while the experienced colleague takes action.
Lack of support and professional sparring. Social support, supervision and training in how trauma affects people are strong protective factors. Without them, employees are less protected.
Factors outside the workplace
Some risk factors come from outside:
- Low status and lack of recognition. Work that is not valued by the outside world, or where you repeatedly have to defend the target group’s need for help, increases the risk.
- Complaints. A formal complaint is stressful, regardless of whether a mistake was made. Long processing times make it worse. If the organisation treats a mistake as the individual’s fault and overlooks its own share of responsibility, this becomes an additional risk factor for the person who made it.
- Media coverage. Coverage can both connect and expose. Coverage that is not considerate can place a strain on both those affected and the professionals.
Factors relating to the individual employee
The same task does not affect everyone in the same way. Certain circumstances in an individual’s life can make them more vulnerable for a period:
- A stressful life situation, such as illness, loss or a difficult divorce.
- Being new to the profession, when experience is still limited and uncertainty is high.
- Having many years of distressing experiences behind you, late in your working life.
- Previous trauma of your own, particularly from childhood.
- Harsh self-criticism and brooding over whether the task was carried out well enough.
These factors are not an argument for making the strain the individual’s problem. They are an argument for the workplace knowing its people and taking their circumstances into account when allocating work. New employees should know what tasks lie ahead and receive support afterwards. Experienced colleagues should have the opportunity to talk about when enough is enough. And anyone in the middle of a crisis at home should be able to tell their manager without it becoming a problem.
Risk factors interact
Risk factors cannot simply be added up like points. They affect one another. A task without a clear framework increases the risk that the employee will be dissatisfied with their own performance afterwards, and that dissatisfaction is in itself a risk factor.
Consider again the two workplaces from the introduction. At the first, the employees knew the task might come, there were two of them, and they knew who was responsible. Afterwards, they talked to their manager about how it had gone. At the second, the task came unexpectedly, the employee was alone, the manager was under pressure, and no one followed up. The incident was the same. The risk was not.
How workplaces can use knowledge about risk factors
Knowledge about risk factors is most valuable before something happens. Prevention takes place at three levels:
- Primary prevention targets the entire organisation and aims to reduce risk factors before problems arise. This may involve clear roles, good contingency plans and planning that ensures no one is left alone with the most difficult tasks.
- Secondary prevention is about detecting signs of psychological overload early and increasing support when they appear.
- Tertiary prevention aims to limit the consequences once the strain has already taken hold.
Many workplaces spend most of their energy on the last level. It is often more effective to shift some of it to the first.
In practice, you can review your tasks with questions such as these:
- Which tasks do we carry out alone that we could carry out in pairs?
- Does everyone know what they are responsible for and what is expected of them?
- Who has had many distressing cases recently?
- Who is new, and who has many years of experience behind them?
- How do we follow up after a difficult task, even when it comes at the end of the day?
- How is the manager doing?
After a distressing incident, the same questions can be used to assess how much support is needed. The more risk factors that were present, the greater the need for help.
The Institute for Strain Psychology helps workplaces analyse their own risk factors and build prevention into everyday working life. Read more about our workplace health and safety courses.
Digital implementation courses for professionals in psychologically demanding work
Foundation Course in Strain Psychology
For a holistic approach to managing everyday high emotional demands and exposure to potentially traumatic events.
Foundation Course in Psychological First Aid
For collective crisis response when something unexpected happens — and the group must manage an extraordinary psychological strain together.
Foundation Course in Psychological Safety
Ensuring that tools and methods truly work in practice — rather than remaining well-written policies in contingency plans.
Foundation Course in Psychosocial Prevention
Creating a shared understanding of what proactive, collective prevention looks like in daily practice.
Q&A: Risk factors in the psychosocial working environment
What is the difference between risk factors and protective factors?
A risk factor increases the likelihood that an employee will be negatively affected by their work. A protective factor reduces the impact of strain or makes a positive outcome more likely. It does not remove the risk, but it can cushion the blow.
Which risk factors are the most important?
In the most psychologically demanding professions, the number and severity of distressing incidents matter most. But how those incidents are handled has a major bearing on how hard they hit. Working alone, unclear roles, lack of support and enforced passivity are risk factors that the workplace itself can do something about.
Can risk factors be eliminated?
Not all of them. In many professions, distressing incidents and high emotional demands are part of the job itself. But workplaces can become much better at organising work around them and strengthening protective factors.
Is it a problem to talk about risk factors in the individual?
It depends on what the knowledge is used for. It should not be used to sort employees or shift responsibility onto them. It should be used to allocate work thoughtfully and provide extra support when it is needed.
Who is responsible for reducing risk factors?
Prevention is a shared and organisational responsibility. Management is responsible for how work is organised. Health and safety representatives, union representatives and colleagues can contribute their knowledge of where things are difficult in practice.