A multi-level perspective on the psychosocial working environment.
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...