Let's go back to the beginning for a moment, what is occupational safety; in a boring, legal sense: a set of organizational, technical, administrative, and managerial measures that companies or your employer organize, prescribe, and implement to protect your life and health in the workplace, or to prevent/mitigate the negative effects (hazards, harm, stress) of your job at the source, so that they ultimately have no or minimal impact on your life and health, or do not lead to injury or occupational disease. Or at least that's how it should be. Very boring, formal, and uninteresting.

For the purposes of this article, let's focus on key words: Your life and health. What can we say about protecting life? You are either alive or not alive (like a binary system 0,1), and you don't need this article to tell you how to survive at work, or to teach your employer things that 99% consist of common sense, conscience, logic, and minimal professional experience for every person. We can talk about that in the boring, dry part of occupational safety from the beginning of the story.

But hey, we managed to survive another day at work, occupational safety has managed to do its 10% potential; we go home to our loved ones with two hands, two legs, a head on our shoulders, but are we happy and satisfied? It is said that a healthy person has 1000 wishes, while a sick person has only one.

Division of Employees Based on Job Satisfaction:

Have you ever thought that at this moment, more than half of your life is spent at work, surrounded by your tasks, activities, and colleagues? That you spend more time with them than with your family? Why half of your life? Well, if we exclude sleep as an unconscious part of life (6-8 hours), and if we consider that the average modern working time is 8-10 hours, especially when we take into account commuting to and from work, we have 6-8 hours left with our family or free time. So, with a simple calculation, we can see how much time we are actually tied to our job and how this time interval undoubtedly and unquestionably positively or negatively affects us, our health, and in the same way, the people around us.

If we consider the health of employees at work and logically divide it into physical and mental states as an inseparable whole, and if we take into account the proven impact of employees' mental state on their physical state, we arrive at the part of occupational safety (workplace comfort/satisfaction) that is unjustly neglected. This is a quality assessment of the impact of mental effort or its sources (stressors) on the physical and mental state of employees that reduces/hinders an employee's full potential or commitment to work.

In other words, my goal with this article is to show how one "invisible" source of effort in the workplace can potentially affect the overall financial result of a company. According to research by the Moj Posao portal, 60% of employees are not satisfied with their current working conditions or the overall environment in the company where they work, 20% say it could be better, while 10-20% of employees are satisfied with working conditions. Ultimately, we all work to live, not the other way around.

The point is to come home and greet your loved ones with a smile at the door, and when asked how work was, answer that it was nice, constructive, motivating, and interesting! Because in the end, sooner or later (preferably sooner), that's all that matters for our lives and our health. May your job be as pleasant as spending time with your family.

Confucius: "If your job becomes a hobby, then you won't have a single working day in your life.
Let's do something about raising and maintaining job satisfaction."

Division of Employees Based on Job Satisfaction and Employment:

Statistical research has shown that 20% of employees are "scrap" (unpleasantly put, but that is their attitude and understanding of their current job, perhaps even the understanding of professional duties in general). From this, it follows that for some, now less important reasons, we cannot influence their perception of their job and responsibilities or increase their satisfaction and effectiveness at work. However, 60-80% of employees are a partial or complete opposite, and they should be our focus. These are workers who fundamentally love their profession, who have recognized it as their calling in life, and as a result, they want to maximize their potential, knowledge, improvement, and enthusiasm for their professional and material development and well-being. They want to fulfill, confirm, and fulfill themselves through their profession, and consequently, they are the real generators and drivers of a company's business efficiency. An inexhaustible and renewable source of pure energy, most often and permanently hidden potential for the progress of the entire company. However, very often the problem is that in the vast majority of cases, this potential has been lost somewhere along the way, and it is most often never discovered and fully utilized. This is where occupational safety can help with its previously mentioned untapped potentials.

Did you know how much the share of human labor in a company's revenue is in high-tech companies / IT / programming, where there is an extremely high share of expert-intellectual knowledge in the company's final product, the expertise of the employee (IT - computer as the main tool), up to 90%? According to the Croatian Bureau of Statistics, last year, IT companies with up to 10 employees averaged 5 million kuna in annual revenue, which would mean that employees contributed to that revenue with 4.5 million kuna solely through their intellectual work, specific, professional knowledge, experience, and dedication to work. According to the aforementioned simple calculation, we come to the conclusion that such an employee brings the company a revenue of 450,000 kuna annually, or 1,700 kuna per day. Shouldn't it then be in our interest that people work, that they are at work, that they are healthy, happy, and satisfied?

Fake Sick Leaves:

If we take the results of the Croatian Health Insurance Fund, that an employee is on sick leave for an average of 12 days per year, and research has shown that a third, even half of those days are fake sick leaves, we get an average of 5 working days. On average, this means 8,500 kuna per year per employee, or 85,000 kuna per year for this observed company with 10 employees.

What are fake sick leaves? When employees, for personal, but increasingly for professional reasons, choose to stay at home rather than go to work. The most common indications for taking sick leave are back pain, shoulder pain, elbow pain, and mental problems, all of which occur on the company's dime. So multiple losses for the company! The employee's contribution to work is missing, you pay the employee who is not working, and most often the workload is shifted to other employees who are then additionally burdened, less efficient, dissatisfied, under more stress, less effective, and end up on sick leave, and so on in a cycle.

Resignations Due to Dissatisfaction:

The second and perhaps more important issue is employees who are willing to leave their current company right now due to stress, even under practically the same or even lower financial conditions, just to escape from stress. Statistics show that there are about 5%, or at least one employee in smaller companies (up to 20 employees). Do you know how long it takes to fully train a new employee as a replacement for a highly qualified, skilled employee who has resigned? On average, one year (450,000 kuna per year!!!)

The leading cause of fake sick leaves and job changes is workplace stress.

What is stress? Canadian psychologist Hans Selye in the 20s of the last century defined stress as the "sum total of all the wear and tear on the body throughout its life." Stress is defined today as a nonspecific response of the body to demands that exceed its capabilities, or a psychosomatic reaction that occurs when we perceive an event as dangerous and/or demanding, or dangerous to us and important to us. These systems have evolved during evolution as the body's response to real dangers in the environment, i.e., specific objects. While short-term stress is inevitable, sometimes necessary and stimulating in the private and business environment, long-term stress is unnatural and harmful because it exceeds our ability to adapt through these systems.

Causes of Workplace Stress (Stressors):

• Lack of control/incompetence/insufficient training of employees for the job - the feeling of not having control over one's job or job duties is the biggest factor. People who do not master their job duties are most prone to health problems.
• Poor working conditions; an uncomfortable or dangerous working environment, such as excessive noise, too many people, or ergonomic issues, can be a source of stress.
• Excessive responsibility; taking on additional responsibilities and tasks is extremely stressful. The situation worsens if we have too much work and cannot say "no" to new tasks.
• Uncertainty about job roles; if we are not sure what we should be doing and what our responsibilities are, we are also prone to stress.
• Interpersonal conflicts; disagreements with colleagues and/or superiors are often a cause of stressful situations.
• Job dissatisfaction and results; if our job does not fulfill us, it is very likely to be stressful.

Consequences of Stress in the Workplace:

• Increased absenteeism,
• Reduced commitment to work,
• Work accidents/injuries/illnesses,
• Increase in complaints or grievances,
• Gossip and rumors,
• Increased customer complaints,
• Increase in employees leaving the company,
• Negative company image among employees and the public,

- reduce the number of fake sick leaves

- increase employee satisfaction/workplace comfort and efficiency

- prevent employees from leaving the company

A happy and satisfied employee is the best employee.