Vortrag von

• Frau Ph.d. Karen Albertsen und Herrn Ph.d. adj. Professor Hans Joergen Limborg, Team Arbejdsliv Kopenhagen

In order to give a brief insight into the contextual background, the presentation will introduce how the psychosocial work environment is defined and regulated by the social partners and the state authorities in Denmark. Danish regulation is based upon a combination of regulation and negotiation: Based on research evidence, the Labour Inspection controls and inspects psychosocial exposures nationally regarded as job related such as high workloads, harassment etc., while the social partners through negotiation are supposed to regulate that part of the psychosocial exposures nationally regarded as being related to management and social relations. In order to understand mechanisms behind success or failure, workplace intervention studies must take this combination of regulation and negotiation based on the aforementioned nationally defined division of psychosocial exposures into account.

Based on the speakers' experiences from a range of different organizational intervention projects performed within the last 10-15 years, the presentation will summarize three major challenges associated with organizational interventions on psychosocial working conditions: 1) To understand the organizational structure at the workplace and to align the intervention into this structure 2) To develop a conceptual framework of the problem - to be addressed by the intervention – that can be understood and managed at the workplace, and 3) secure the maintenance of organizational changes in the long time perspective. The challenges will be illustrated with examples and experiences from intervention studies e.g. about health & safety committees for juvenile workers in the retail industry, capacity building for collaboration in public schools and implementation of management systems for the psychosocial work environment.