استفاده از دفاتر هوشمند برای پیش بینی استرس شغلی Using smart offices to predict occupational stress

1. Introduction The pace of modern-day life, the competitiveness in the workplace, poor working conditions and the immense number of tasks with inaccessible deadlines that are assigned to workers are causing work-related stress to become increasingly frequent in our work environment. The International Labour Organization (ILO) defines stress as the harmful physical and emotional response caused by insufficient perceived resources and abilities of individuals to cope with the perceived demands, and is determined by work organization, work design and labour relations (I. L. O, 2016). It is the second most frequent work-related health problem in Europe (European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, 2013a), presenting in 2005 a prevalence of 22% among working Europeans. In a recent opinion poll (European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, 2013b), 51% of the workers confessed that stress is common in their workplace and the 6th European Working Conditions Survey (European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions, 2016) exposed that 36% of European workers deal “(almost) all of the time” with high pressure to meet tight deadlines. If timely action is not taken, occupational stress can provoke serious physical and mental problems on the worker (Milczarek et al., 2009), but also important economic losses in the companies. Musculoskeletal disorders, depression, anxiety, increased probability of infections (Wijsman et al., 2013), chronic fatigue syndrome, digestive problems, diabetes, osteoporosis, stomach ulcers and coronary heart disease (Marlen Cosmar et al., 2014; Peternel et al., 2012; Bickford, 2005) are only a few examples of occupational stress’ long-term health consequences. Occupational stress can also result in increased absenteeism and presenteeism, reduced motivation, satisfaction and commitment, along with a greater rate of staff turnover and intention to quit, costing high amounts of money to the enterprises (Drivers and Barriers, 2012). An estimate of €617 billion a year is what work-related depression costs to European enterprises, including costs of absenteeism and presenteeism (€272 billion), loss of productivity (€242 billion), healthcare costs (€63 billion) and social welfare costs in the form of disability benefit payments (€39 billion) (European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, 2013a). An estimate of 50–60% of all lost working days in European enterprises are due to work-related stress and psychosocial risks (European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, 2013a). In this context, methods to detect occupational stress in time so as to take the required measures and to avoid its negative health-related and economic consequences are necessary. Often, stress levels are evaluated by means of self-reported questionnaires, which are performed from time to time, and therefore, are not adequate to detect subtle changes that might end up in a more serious problem (Alberdi et al., 2015). Usually, the diagnosis comes too late with these methods, when damage has been done. Moreover, self-reported questionnaires are subjective and rely on subjects’ recall abilities and awareness of the situations, which is not guaranteed (McDuff et al., 2012), leading sometimes to incorrect stress level measurements.