Long Hours and Job Insecurity Killing 840,000 Workers a Year, ILO Reports

The International Labour Organization's new global report, the psychosocial working environment: Global developments and pathways for action, has found that more than 840,000 deaths a year are linked to psychosocial risk factors, mostly through cardiovascular disease and mental ill-health, and an estimated 1.37 per cent of global GDP is lost annually. For the first time, a worldwide body has placed the way work is designed, organised, and managed squarely inside the OSH conversation.

What Does Psychosocial Risk Actually Mean in Practice?

Psychosocial risk is the harm that arises from how work is designed, managed, and experienced. The ILO groups it across three interrelated levels: the job itself (demands, control, skill use), how work is managed and organised (workload, supervision, support), and the broader policies governing employment conditions, working time, and worker participation.

UK practitioners will recognise the shape of this. The HSE's Management Standards have used a similar lens since 2004, covering demands, control, support, relationships, role, and change. What's new is the global evidence base: the ILO has linked five risk factors — job strain, effort-reward imbalance, job insecurity, long working hours, and bullying and harassment — to WHO and Global Burden of Disease mortality data. The result is a number you can put in front of a board.

How Widespread Is Exposure to Psychosocial Hazards?

The ILO estimates that 35 per cent of workers globally work more than 48 hours a week — a recognised cardiovascular risk factor. Around 23 per cent have experienced violence or harassment in their working life, with psychological violence the most prevalent form at 18 per cent.

Those figures sit on top of structural change most safety leads will recognise: digital monitoring creeping into roles that didn't have it five years ago, hybrid arrangements that blur supervision and support, AI-mediated task allocation, and the platform economy reshaping what a contract of employment looks like. The ILO is explicit that these shifts can intensify existing risks or generate new ones if left unmanaged.

Where Is the Report Pushing OSH Practice?

Three shifts stand out as a practitioner.

• First, away from outcome-based framing. The report is unusually direct in its critique of legislation that frames employer duties primarily around protecting "mental health". That language, it argues, drives individualised responses — resilience workshops, EAPs, mindfulness apps — when the evidence points to root causes in job design and work organisation.
• Second, up the hierarchy of control. Organisational and collective measures take priority over individual interventions. Workload management, role clarity, communication, and leadership practices come before wellbeing apps. Anyone who has tried to wedge a yoga session into a workplace running 12-hour shifts and chronic understaffing already knows why.
• Third, into the management system. The report leans on the ILO-OSH 2001 framework and asks organisations to fold psychosocial risk into the same process used for physical hazards. Risk assessment, hierarchy of control, periodic review. The mechanics aren't new; the application is what's being formalised.

What Should Health and Safety Professionals Do Now?

Five practical moves for safety leads reading this report alongside their existing risk profile:

1. Audit your existing risk assessment for psychosocial coverage. If it's silent on workload, role clarity, supervision quality, and bullying and harassment, you have a documented gap to close.
2. Map your data sources before commissioning a survey. Sickness absence patterns, turnover by team, grievance and exit data, HR records on working hours — most organisations already hold the signals.
3. Get HR and OSH in the same room. Psychosocial risk is the one hazard where the controls almost always sit outside safety's direct authority. Joint ownership is non-negotiable.
4. Stress-test your individual interventions. If your response to a high-pressure team has been EAP signposting, you've treated a symptom. Ask what's generating the demand.
5. Use the ILO's three-level model as a conversation tool with leadership. It moves the discussion from "is this person coping" to "is this job survivable as designed".

How Robust Is the Evidence Behind the 840,000 Figure?

A note on methodology, because the number will get quoted everywhere. The ILO combined global prevalence data for the five risk factors with epidemiological research linking each to cardiovascular disease, stroke, and mental disorders, then applied those associations to WHO and Global Burden of Disease mortality data. It's a modelled estimate, not a death certificate count — the right approach for risks that act gradually through intermediate disease pathways. The report itself is candid about data gaps and uneven geographical coverage.

Frequently Asked Questions

What Are the Five Main Psychosocial Risk Factors Identified by the ILO?

Job strain (high demands combined with low control), effort-reward imbalance, job insecurity, long working hours, and workplace bullying and harassment.

Is Psychosocial Risk Covered by UK Health and Safety Law?

Yes. The Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 and the Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 require employers to assess and control risks to health, including those arising from work-related stress. The HSE's Management Standards provide the recognised framework for assessment.

Does the ILO Report Introduce New Legal Obligations?

No. ILO reports do not create binding duties in themselves. They shape policy direction, inform national regulatory development, and influence ILO Convention application. UK duties remain governed by domestic legislation and HSE guidance.

What's the Difference Between Mental Health Support and Psychosocial Risk Management?

Mental health support typically addresses individuals after harm has occurred or symptoms have emerged. Psychosocial risk management addresses the working conditions that generate that harm in the first place. The ILO report argues both are needed, but organisational measures must come first in the hierarchy of control.

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