Boostress_ebook
Page | 7 www.boostress.eu When conducting desk-research to find initiatives that specifically address the stress management of young professionals, no such initiatives were identified by project researchers. Instead initiatives and programmes identified at European level tend to address employers and managers; supporting them to recognise the cost of employee stress to their business and highlighting steps and strategies that they can employ to mitigate the impact of employee work-place stress on their business. This is also the case when we undertook research to identify online training materials and resource. From the desk- research, it is evident that most resources for workplace stress management are primarily aimed at employers and owners of SME companies, with employees and young professionals identified as secondary target groups for these resources. Nonetheless the examples below are useful in the context of BooStress as framework documents and those of most note are listed below: The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work has developed an E-Guide (2018) to Managing stress and psycho-social risks providing information about work-related stress and psychosocial risks to foster awareness, understanding and management of these issues in the workplace. National versions are available for Ireland, UK and Malta. Healthy Workplace, Healthy Society - Blueprint for Business Action on Health Literacy (2013): aims to stimulate businesses to engage in the advancement of health knowledge and competencies among employees and organisational change by creating health-friendly work environments that improve the health literacy levels of employees, in order to empower them to become healthier and achieve a better quality of life at work. The Blueprint supports the Europe 2020 strategy and the renewed EU strategy for Corporate Social Responsibility 2011-2014. The Blueprint includes a Toolkit of resources of which a number focus on Stress and Mental Health. From our analysis of EU labour market policy initiatives, we can say that in all cases, the focus is on the integration of young people into the labour market to address structural issues such as high levels of youth unemployment and underemployment. As such this is the primary focus of EU policy initiatives with little or no specific focus on workplace stress management for young workers and professionals. Through our desk research, it is apparent that creating more and better jobs is one of the main goals of the Europe 2020 strategy. The European employment strategy (EES), with its employment guidelines and supporting programmes such as the Employment and Social Innovation (EaSI) programme, is designed to contribute to growth and jobs, labour mobility and social progress. The European Social Fund (ESF) also supports a broad range of labour market policy initiatives in the Member States, and in February 2013, the European Council agreed to create the Youth Employment Initiative (YEI), with a budget of €8.8 billion for 2014-2020. The YEI targets young people aged 15-24 who are neither in employment nor in education or training (NEETs) in regions particularly affected by unemployment. These and other European funding instruments help to support policy initiatives in the field of employment, such as the: • Council Recommendation on establishing a European Youth Guarantee (April 2013), which aims at ensuring that all young people under the age of 25 receive a good-quality offer of employment, continued education, an apprenticeship or a traineeship within a period of four months of becoming unemployed or leaving formal education; • European Alliance for Apprenticeships (launched in July 2013); • Council Recommendation on a Quality Framework for Traineeships (March 2014). • Commission proposal for a Council Recommendation on a European Framework for Quality and Effective Apprenticeships (October 2017).
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