OSH News

The Spanish Institute for Safety and Health at Work has published a new report about how digital platform work (DPW) impacts occupational safety and health (OSH) specifically inquiring into psychosocial risks factors.

The study found out that:

1. DPW boosts pre-existing psychosocial risks (linked to stress) and creates new risks, such as cyber harassment. In Spain, localised passenger transport and delivery services workers are the most affected workers by stress.
2. Long irregular working hours and similar precarious working conditions linked to the atypicality of DPW increase the chance of suffering a high degree of stress, particularly in Spain.
3. Management through algorithms (algorithmic control) is associated with a number of psychosocial risk factors and stress generation, particularly for remote workers working in digital platforms.

Read the full report: Desafíos de la digitalización para la seguridad y salud en el trabajo. La emergencia de riesgos psicosociales y el trabajo de plataformas digitales (in Spanish, abstract available in English)

Read EU-OSHA’s thematic page on digitalisation.