World Day for Safety and Health at Work

Among U.S. workers in organizations that have implemented AI, 65% say that AI has had a "somewhat" or "extremely" positive impact on their productivity (7% say "somewhat" or "extremely" negative). At the same time, only 12% strongly agree that AI has transformed how work gets done in their organization. Surveys of leaders reinforce the same disconnect between individual productivity gains and organizational outcomes that employees report. A recent NBER survey of executives in the U.S., U.K., Germany and Australia found that while AI use is widespreadin corporations, 89% of leaders reportno impact of AI on their company’s laborproductivity in the past three years . However, they expect AI will boost productivity by 1.4% over the next three years . One way of thinking about employee engagement is as a measure of readiness for change. AI is a major disruption; organizations with engaged employees tend to navigate disruptions more successfully. In ...

The Shrinking Perk of Being a Manager. Since 2022, manager engagement has dropped by nine points. Individual contributor engagement also declined but has had a slight rebound. The largest year-over-year drop in manager engagement occurred between 2024 and 2025, when it declined by five points from 27% to 22%. In short, managers used to enjoy an “engagement premium” at work , but they are increasingly only as engaged as those they lead. South Asia’s decline in manager engagement suggests organizational flattening may be a factor. In 2025, South Asia (primarily India) experienced an eight-point decline in manager engagement, the largest decline of any region. At the same time, the percentage of managers in South Asia also declined, suggesting that employers are cutting management roles. Top IT firms add just 17 staff in nine months, hiring nearly freezes. Some evidence suggests that in 2025, India’s IT sector saw a substantial slowdown in hiring, along with cuts to mid-level and senio...

 The evidence reviewed in the report entitled '' The psychosocial working environment: Global developments and pathways for action '' shows that the psychosocial working environment has a powerful influence on workers’ physical and mental health and well-being, as well as on organizational performance. How jobs are designed, managed and organized, and the broader policies, practices and procedures that govern work, can lead to negative consequences – such as increased risk of illness, injury and reduced work ability – or to positive outcomes, including improved health, well-being and performance. Translating this knowledge into consistent prevention requires coordinated efforts by governments, employers and workers and their organizations, OSH professionals and other relevant actors. These efforts need to focus on three interrelated areas: strengthening the knowledge base and monitoring systems; improving the coherence and clarity of policy and regulatory frameworks; an...

  Promoting compliance, including through targeted support and awareness-raising, alongside effective enforcement by regulators, is essential to ensure that legal provisions on psychosocial risks translate into safer and healthier working environments . This is typically pursued through a balanced regulatory mix in which enforcement is combined with education, guidance and capacity building. Such approaches reflect contemporary regulatory theory, including responsive regulation and strategic enforcement, which emphasise combining deterrence with support for compliance rather than relying on sanctions alone.  Labour inspectorates play a central role in this framework. Across jurisdictions, inspection systems typically combine proactive prevention activities – such as targeted campaigns, preventive visits, sectoral programmes and thematic inspections – with reactive enforcement functions, including responses to complaints, incident notifications and reported harms. This dual ro...

  Ensuring a safe and healthy working environment in all its dimensions requires that the psychosocial working environment be integrated into OSH management systems (OSH-MS). Embedding psychosocial considerations within OSH-MS supports a preventive safety and health culture in which all workplace hazards are addressed in a coherent and systematic manner. At the same time, the psychosocial working environment is shaped by decisions taken within broader organizational manage - ment systems, including human resources policies, operational planning, change management and work design. Effective prevention therefore depends on alignment between OSH management processes and these wider organizational practices, ensuring that psychosocial risks are addressed both within OSH governance and in everyday management decisions. Worker participation is central to this approach, as workers contribute essential knowledge about how work is experienced in practice. The ILO Guidelines on Occupation...

 The impacts of Psychosocial risks on Workers are: Unhealthy coping behaviours - Depression - Anxiety disorders - Burnout - Sleep disturbances - Fatigue - Cognitive decline and dementia - Suicidal behaviours - Cardiovascular diseases - Acquired metabolic disorders - Digestive and immune function - Occupational Cancer - Musculoskeletal disorders - Reproductive and perinatal outcomes - Occupational injuries .

 The impacts of Psychosocial risks on the enterprises are: Absenteeism , presenteeism and leaveism , Work engagement , performance and productivity , Return-to-work outcomes , Early exit from work , disability retirement and job quitting , Job satisfaction and staff retention , Organizational reputation , Trust and collaboration

  Social dialogue plays a central role in shaping national approaches to the psychosocial working environment. Evidence shows that OSH policies and regulations tend to be more effective when employers’ and workers’ organizations are involved in their development, monitoring and implementation, as participation strengthens legitimacy, improves compliance and facilitates adaptation to sectoral and organizational realities. In the area of psychosocial risks in particular, the knowledge and experience of workers and employers are essential for identifying organizational features, understanding sectoral risk patterns and designing responses that reflect actual work processes . Social dialogue mechanisms – whether through national tripartite bodies, bipartite committees, sectoral platforms or workplace-level structures – thus provide an important foundation for embedding psychosocial risk prevention within OSH systems. Approaches differ across countries as regards the respective roles ...

 Building on this taxonomy, the report adopts a multi-level perspective that prioritizes modifiable features of the psychosocial working environment, from how work is designed, managed and organized to broader workplace policies and practices. This approach moves beyond individual-centred perspectives that focus primarily on workers’ perceptions or personal characteristics and emphasize adaptation to existing working conditions. Instead, it highlights elements of work organization and management that fall within employers’ sphere of influence. The perspective therefore supports a proactive and systemic approach to the design and management of work, focusing on psychosocial risks that, so far as is reasonably practicable, can be managed within the workplace. Within this perspective, psychosocial factors are grouped across three broad and interrelated levels. While these levels overlap and interact, and should not be understood as independent silos, this structure helps clarify wher...