Employee involvement in health and safety in financial sector

According to several local-level surveys, intense restructuring in the Italian financial services sector since 1994 has led to widespread stress and other psychosocial outcomes, such as mobbing and burnout. The joint survey by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Prevention and the Independent Federation of Italian Bank Workers reveals low employee involvement in managing, implementing and assessing health and safety policies, but higher access to training and information.

Background

Italy’s financial services sector was a highly fragmented and poorly competitive sector until the early 1990s, when it began to take a more dominant administrative approach, regulated by cartel agreements. However, it is currently dominated by three large groups – Unicredit, Intesa-Sanpaolo and MPS – as a result of an impressive sequence of mergers and acquisitions (IT0706019I, IT0702049I, IT0609029I). In order to increase their value and gain bargaining power in such a process, the banks aimed to increase their profitability by placing major emphasis on marketing strategies affecting only partly their organisational model, as pointed out by several local-level surveys on health and safety promoted by sectoral trade unions such as the Italian Banking and Insurance Federation (Federazione Italiana Bancari e Assicuratavi, Fiba), affiliated to the Italian Confederation of Workers’ Trade Unions (Confederazione Italiana Sindacati Lavoratori, Cisl). Surveys were carried out in [Campania (in Italian, 2.3Mb MS Word)](http://db.formez.it/FontiNor.nsf/1838adefe48adb2bc1256b66003de6c8/A758AD05D69E2F8FC1256FFF0061B015/$file/INDAGINE VOCI DAL BUIO.rtf) and [Puglia (in Italian, 2Mb PDF)](http://www.fisacpuglia.it/Stress/relazionePAPPONE BARI06 corr.pdf) in southern Italy, Lazio (in Italian, 1.3Mb PDF) in central Italy, Lombardy (in Italian, 294Kb PDF) in the north (Fiba-Cisl, 2005), as well as Liguria (Piotto and Magrin, 2006) and Piedmont (in Italian, 795Kb PDF) in northwestern Italy. A forthcoming survey is expected in northeastern regions of the country.

Health and safety survey

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Prevention (Istituto Superiore per la Prevenzione e la Sicurezza del Lavoro, ISPESL), with the support of the Independent Federation of Italian Bank Workers (Federazione Autonoma Bancari Italiani, Fabi), the largest independent trade union in the financial services sector, carried out a survey on health and safety issues among 2,100 employees. The article entitled ‘The active involvement of employees in psychosocial risk prevention in the banking sector: a key element in implementing corporate social responsibility’ (in Italian), published by Prevention Today (Prevenzione Oggi), summarises the main results of the survey. No information is available about the sample design. This survey is the first nationwide survey carried out in the financial services sector, with a particular focus on employees’ training and involvement in health and safety practices. Unfortunately, however, no breakdown is provided by gender, occupational status and seniority.

Survey findings

According to the ISPESL/Fabi survey, only one in three respondents feels involved in health and safety policies implemented by the organisation employing them. Employee involvement is very limited in the management of health and safety policies (8.8% of respondents), while it is slightly higher in the implementation (13.6% of respondents) and assessment (18.3%) phases. In total, 56.6% of respondents report no involvement at all (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Employee involvement in different phases of health and safety intervention (%)

Source: ISPESL, 2008

Employee involvement in different phases of health and safety intervention (%)

When investigating whether the provisions of EU Directive 89/391 regarding employees’ training and information on health and safety issues, 57.1% of respondents report receiving training on such issues, while 60.4% were informed about workplace-related risks and 40.6% were informed about task-related risks; information on prevention of both workplace and task-related risks is more limited, at 41.8% and 37.7% respectively (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Training and information on health and safety issues (%)

Source: ISPESL, 2008

Training and information on health and safety issues (%)

While most respondents report collaborative social relations with both colleagues and superiors, albeit at a lower level with the latter (89% and 66.5% respectively), 70.2% of respondents report mental fatigue, as a symptom of work pressure. Overall, 4.6% of respondents report experiencing mental fatigue in the mornings, while 15.5% report experiencing this problem in the middle of their working day and 26.6% at the end of the working day (Figure 3).

Figure 3: Mental fatigue among workers as perceived throughout the working day (%)

Source: ISPESL, 2008

Mental fatigue among workers as perceived throughout the working day (%)

Finally, work satisfaction is investigated analytically according to several dimensions. Working time (79.1%) and pay (69.4%) are the most satisfactory aspects of work reported by employees (Figure 4). Career opportunities and creativity, that is the ability to autonomously influence job routines and their outcomes, are the least satisfactory and both are reported by 31.1% of respondents. This is followed by monotony of job tasks and poor motivation at work (both 36%).

Figure 4: Satisfaction among workers over different aspects of work (%)

Source: ISPESL, 2008

Satisfaction among workers over different aspects of work (%)

Commentary

Financial services is the only sector in Italy where trade unions have promoted various surveys on quality of work and work-related health outcomes, with a special focus on psychosocial factors according to different approaches. Surveys carried out in the central and southern regions of Campania, Puglia and Lazio focus on work-related stress and outline a widespread feeling of discomfort among workers. Other studies, such as those in Lombardy and Piedmont, focus on organisational issues (Fiba-Cisl, 2005; Piotto and Magrin, 2006), highlighting the low level of job control and high exposure to burnout risk, which appear to be related to poor quality of interaction with the employer. The ISPESL-Fabi survey, by validating most findings from the local-level studies, outlines the importance of employee involvement and awareness both at individual and collective level.

It is worth noting that these surveys played an important role in the publication of guidelines by the Italian Workers’ Compensation Authority (Istituto Nazionale Assicurazione contro gli Infortuni sul Lavoro, INAIL) on stress, mobbing and organisational constraints (in Italian, 566Kb PDF) and by ISPESL on stress and mobbing (in Italian, 1.6Mb PDF). Both sets of guidelines emphasise the role of a constrained work environment in the increase of occupational diseases.

References

Fiba-Cisl, Stress in ambiente bancario [Stress in the banking environment], Rome, unpublished paper, 2005.

Piotto, I. and Magrin, G. Condizioni di lavoro e relazioni industriali nella trasformazione del sistema bancario – Il caso delle aziende di credito della provincia di Imperia [Working conditions and industrial relations in banking system transformation – The case of the Imperia provence], Rome, Ediessee, 2006.

Mario Giaccone, CESOS