Dear Colleagues,

Policies and practices that promote healthy work are a benefit to everyone. It is, however, now more than 20 years since Levy, Sauter, and Shimomitsu (1999) published a paper entitled “Work-related stress—it’s time to act”. Various theories and models that sought to explain work-related stress and its causes had already been proposed, there was evidence that exposure to workplace stressors threatened individual psychological and physical health, and a business case for action through the accumulating evidence of the substantial economic cost to organizations and society of occupational stress existed. After 20 years, psychosocial hazards at work remain a significant problem and a global concern. There is international agreement that occupational stressors must be better managed to benefit workers, organizations, and society.

Whilst there is consensus that a proactive population approach is required to prevent or at least ameliorate the effects of stressors and that reactive approaches do not meet normal duty-of-care expectations on employers, successful intervention is difficult. There have been various positive initiatives to help employers tackle work-related stress, such as the development of Management Standards in the UK (Cousins et al 2004). What else is being done to tackle work-related stress? What evidence is there to influence the design of work in the 2020s to minimize workers’ distress whilst not compromising efficiency and productivity?

This Special Issue of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health (IJERPH) focuses on advancing current knowledge and interventions towards minimizing work-related stress. New research papers, reviews, and case reports are welcome. Papers dealing with new approaches to stress risk assessment and management are also welcome. Other manuscript types accepted include methodological papers, position papers, brief reports, and commentaries.

Dr. Rosanna Cousins
Guest Editor

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• Occupational stress
• Psychosocial hazards
• Health and Safety
• Proactive approaches
• Interventions