Working world Austria

Working conditions and mental stress in Austria

Since 2015, the "Working World Austria" project has been continuously researching the workplace-related framework conditions and circumstances under which employees in Austria pursue their gainful employment. The main aim is to investigate the relationships between sources of stress in the workplace (especially with regard to the current challenges of flexibilization and digitalization of the world of work), resources at work and adverse consequences.

Aims of the project:

• Obtaining representative standard values in Austria for stress in the workplace for workplace evaluation projects in order to ensure an optimal assessment of mental stress in the workplace
• Identification of "new" sources of stress in the workplace, which are becoming increasingly important in the course of today's flexibilization and digitalization of the world of work (e.g. virtual teams/leadership, unbounded work, etc.) and expansion of the instruments for measuring stress to include these "new" sources of stress. Consideration of the sources of stress in these "new working environments" is expressly prescribed in the German guidelines for conducting risk assessments.
• Recognizing the connections between stress, strain, resources and workplace-specific consequences such as job satisfaction, commitment, company loyalty and burnout risk
• Raising awareness of the issues of stress, strain, recovery and resources

Data and facts

Duration: ongoing since 2015

Project management and cooperation partners: Department of Psychology, in cooperation with the BGM of the University of Graz and research-team