Due to the changing world of work, psychological strain is increasingly becoming the focus of occupational health and safety and corporate health management. According to European Standard EN ISO 10075-1, which forms the basis for employee protection and particularly the 2013 amendment regarding the evaluation of psychological strain, this is defined as "the totality of all measurable external influences that affect a person and have a psychological impact on them".
Therefore, this is not about measuring job satisfaction, burnout, performance, stress, or similar factors in individual employees, but exclusively about the conditions under which work takes place. It examines which work-related factors can potentially lead to psychological strain in order to identify and improve them in a targeted manner.
In 23 EU countries, the systematic recording of the strain situation is explicitly anchored in law.