Occupational safety and health in Europe - state and trends 2023 
European Agency for Safety and Health at Work – EU-OSHA 26 
Figure 3: ‘Exposure to risk factors adversely affecting mental wellbeing’ – LFS Ad hoc survey 202014 
 
ESENER 2019 reveals that several psychosocial risk factors are reported to be present in a significant 
share of establishments in the EU27, namely having to deal with difficult customers, patients and pupils 
(59%) and time pressure (45%).  
The aspects ‘Difficult clients’, ‘Poor communication’ and ‘Long working ho urs’ are major psycho-
social risks. The increase of workforce in communicative and client-oriented occupations — social work, 
education, tourism and entertainment, health and care —  during the last 30 years adds to the 
conventional work with clients in service, sales and health occupations.  
The next table shows the top seven EU Member states with the highest share of these risks for all 
sectors and for the sector ‘Human health and social work activities’ (HHSW).  
 
Table 1: Psychosocial risks, Top countries ‘All Sectors’ and ‘Human health and social work’  – ESENER 
2019 
 
Difficult customers, patients and pupils (‘clients’) seem to be the most widespread psychosocial 
burden, with workers in P ortugal, Malta and Cyprus are most exposed. In  the sector HHSW , eastern 
European countries are much more present, Slovenia at the top, followed by Portugal, Estonia, Poland 
and Bulgaria.