Health and safety at work have always been major concerns for the Volvo group: each entity has its own health and safety at work personnel. Concerning the specific subject of mental health, it has taken on a new dimension since covid. Today, we feel the need to be more proactive and to gain maturity on this issue. So that our leaders and managers control this risk as well as physical health or safety issues.
A survey to assess psychosocial risk factors
To do this, this year we experimented with the COPSOQ (Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire) survey at Renault Trucks level at the Lyon establishment, which represents 4,500 employees. This questionnaire, designed by the University of Copenhagen, makes it possible to assess psychosocial risk factors at work. This process took place in several stages: onboarding of managers, raising awareness among all employees, sending the questionnaire, analysis of the results at manager level, then presentation of these to their team, identification of priority subjects and definition of an action plan.
Our objective is to gradually extend this survey to all our entities. In 2025, 70% of employees should have responded. The idea of the approach is both to identify our strengths and to maintain a high level of requirements on these subjects, but also to highlight areas for improvement.
The main difficulty when building a mental health action plan is that we are dealing with a multifactorial problem. There is no single answer that will suit all individuals. We are all different physiologically, we have different stories and experiences and we must accept that.
“Make all individuals responsible for their health at work”
To bring on board as many employees as possible, different levers must be activated. The first step is to raise awareness among top management and local managers of the very notion of psychosocial risks. And to make them aware that they can find their source in factors as diverse as:
-- workload (overload or underload);
- work/life balance;
- autonomy, skills. The fact of being helpless in relation to change, to the transformations of one’s profession. For example, in our studies and research departments, our experts, who have been working on thermal engines for 15 years, must now improve their skills on electric vehicles. The company must support this type of transition;
- relationships between colleagues, with the manager, with other teams.
Once we have clearly defined this, we must also give everyone the tools to create a climate of psychological safety, an environment where we can say things without being judged. Within the group, we promote a « care management » : the manager is responsible for his team in terms of health and safety but all individuals must be responsible for their own health and safety at work. Everyone must take care of themselves in order to be able to take care of others, which means: knowing how to set our limits to preserve our health and accepting that others take care of us and offer us their help.
In 2025, we will also continue to highlight training on active listening, change management, communication and self-knowledge. Just like mental health first aid training, based on the OHS (workplace first aid) training model, which lasts two days. The objective is to train reference employees capable of preventing psychosocial risks and effectively guiding people who need it.
What will allow us to measure the success of the action plans put in place following the COPSOQ survey is to ask the same questions to our employees after two years to see if the results are better.
