Welche Barrieren hindern Klein- und Kleinstunternehmen bei der Implementierung einer Gefährdungsbeurteilung psychische Belastungen? Eine qualitative Interviewstudie aus mehreren Quellen

Purpose According to legal requirements in many countries, companies regardless of their size should carry out psychosocial risk assessments to prevent the negative impact of psychosocial stress. However, recent studies have demonstrated large deficiencies in the implementation of psychosocial risk assessments. In addition, most of the assessments can be categorised as incomplete regarding process and scope. Especially micro- and small enterprises are in arrears. In order to improve this situation, it is important a) to identify factors that enable micro- and small firms to adopt psychosocial risk assessments or other systematic prevention programmes and b) to explore reasons, which lead to incomplete execution or termination within these firms.

Methods To address the former two issues, we conducted two consecutive studies following a qualitative empirical approach. Study 1 focused on recruiting companies to execute psychosocial risk assessments. We sent invitations via Email to 585 companies from a business register in a large German city in North Rhine Westphalia. In post-hoc standardized non-responder interviews (N= 64), we explored reasons for non-participation.

Study 2 focused on longitudinal data capturing the process of psychosocial risk assessments over the time course of 18 months: In 15 small companies progress, abort and reasons for termination were explored and documented.

Results In Study 1, main reasons for drop-out were no time, capacity, or interest in the subject. In Study 2, results reveal a large required time effort, need for support, personal contacts, and regular reminders. Reasons for termination were low resources in terms of personnel and time.

Conclusions Overall, the results show need for action and indicate demand for support as well as alternative and less timely approaches.

Publication History

Article published online:
02 September 2021