What are psychosocial factors?
The term applies to job characteristics that operate through psychological and social mechanisms: workload and pace, autonomy in deciding how to perform tasks, clarity of responsibilities, support from supervisors and colleagues, quality of leadership, relationships and conflicts, participation, recognition, job security, work schedule and work-life balance, and exposure to violence or harassment. None of these is inherently harmful; what is harmful is the combination of high demands with low resources sustained over time.
Psychosocial factors are distinct from their effects. Work-related stress, burnout , and associated health problems are consequences; the factors are the working conditions that cause them and over which the company can take action. This distinction has a practical consequence: psychosocial assessment does not evaluate people, it evaluates the organization of work.
In Spanish legislation, Article 4.7 of Law 31/1995 includes among working conditions “all other characteristics of work, including those relating to its organization and arrangement, that influence the magnitude of the risks to which the worker is exposed.” Psychosocial risks, therefore, form part of the risk assessment and general prevention obligations, although there is no specific regulation governing them.
Main factors and how they are grouped
The assessment methods group the factors in a similar way. The INSST’s FPSICO method, in its version 4.1, uses nine factors:
- Working time. Schedules, shifts, night work, breaks and predictability.
- Autonomy. Ability to decide on the order, pace, methods, and breaks.
- Workload. Quantity, time pressure, cognitive demands, and attention.
- Psychological demands. Emotional and cognitive requirements of the task.
- Variety and content. Meaning of work, variety, and recognition.
- Participation and supervision. Degree of participation in decisions and style of supervision.
- Focus on the employee and compensation. Information, training, development, and fairness.
- Role performance. Clarity, conflict, and role overload.
- Relationships and social support. Support from superiors and colleagues, quality of relationships, and exposure to conflicts.
Other methods valid in Spain, such as CoPsoQ-istas21 or those developed by regional institutes, use different groupings with the same logic of requirements, control, support and compensation.
How are they evaluated?
- Participatory planning: agreement with the workers’ representatives on method, scope, units of analysis and guarantees of anonymity, as required by the duty of consultation of article 33 of Law 31/1995.
- Information gathering: validated questionnaires, supplemented with interviews, focus groups and objective data (absenteeism, turnover, overtime, complaints).
- Analysis by units: the results are interpreted by position, department or center, never by person, to locate where unfavorable exposures are concentrated.
- Identifying causes: what specific characteristics of the organization explain each unfavorable exposure.
- Planning of measures: changes in the organization of work with responsible party, deadline and resources, integrated into the preventive planning.
- Monitoring and reassessment: checking effectiveness and periodic review or when conditions change.
The Labor and Social Security Inspectorate has established in Technical Criterion 104/2021 how it verifies these obligations: existence of a psychosocial evaluation with a reliable method and participation, adoption of measures against the risks detected and action in specific situations of conflict, harassment or violence.
Organizational application
Managing psychosocial factors requires decisions that correspond to management and supervisors, not just the prevention service:
- Job and process design. Size of staff and workloads, define roles, provide decision-making capacity and variety.
- Leadership. Training managers in team management, recognition, feedback, and conflict resolution.
- Working time. Shift design, limits on extended working hours, disconnection and work-life balance.
- Procedures for action. Protocols against harassment and violence, communication channels and conflict resolution.
- Participation. Consultation of representatives in the evaluation and measures; information of results to the people.
Individual measures (training in stress management, psychological support) are useful as a complement, but the regulations require action first on the origin of the risk, that is, on the organization of work.
Limits and common mistakes
- Evaluating solely with a questionnaire and without participation, obtaining results that no one recognizes or uses.
- Confusing psychosocial assessment with a climate or satisfaction survey.
- Identifying unfavorable exposures and not planning measures, or only planning training actions.
- Interpreting results per person or using them to assess individual performance.
- Exclude positions, centers or groups (temporary, contracts, teleworking) from the evaluation.
- Treating psychosocial problems as matters of personality or individual mental health, when their origin lies in working conditions.
Psychosocial factors are not diagnosed in individuals nor measured with clinical instruments; when there is harm to health, health surveillance and investigation of that harm are governed by their own rules.
Practical example
Situation: A service company with a call center of 80 people has recorded an increase in absenteeism and turnover in the last year.
- Evaluation. Agreement with the worker safety representatives to apply FPSICO 4.1 by teams, with complementary interviews with managers and discussion groups with operators.
- Results. Very unfavorable exposure in terms of workload, autonomy, and role performance in claims teams; inadequate social support; unfavorable working time due to short-notice shift changes.
- Causes. Average call time targets incompatible with the complexity of the claims, rigid scripts, overlapping functions between two departments, and schedules published two days in advance.
- Measures. Review of time objectives by call type, margin of decision in the script, written clarification of functions, publication of schedules fifteen days in advance and training of managers; semi-annual monitoring of absenteeism and turnover and re-evaluation after one year.
Regulatory framework in Spain
- Law 31/1995, articles 4.7, 14, 15.1.dyg, 16 and 33. Working conditions that include the organization, adaptation of work to the person, coherent planning of the organization and social relations, risk assessment and consultation with workers.
- Royal Decree 39/1997, articles 3 to 7 and 34. Evaluation with methods that offer confidence in their result and ergonomics and applied psychosociology as a preventive specialty.
- Technical Criterion 104/2021 of the Labor and Social Security Inspectorate . Criteria for inspection actions in matters of psychosocial risks.
- NTP 926: Psychosocial factors: evaluation methodology (INSST, 2012) . Phases and criteria for the evaluation of psychosocial factors.
- FPSICO 4.1: Psychosocial Factor Assessment Method (INSST, 2022) . INSST reference tool with nine factors.
The European Framework Agreement on Work-Related Stress (2004) and the Framework Agreement on Harassment and Violence at Work (2007) were incorporated in Spain through inter-confederation agreements. ILO Convention 190 on Violence and Harassment, ratified by Spain, requires that these risks be taken into account in occupational safety and health management.
