The theme of this year's World Health Day, which is celebrated on the beginning of April was depression. Affecting more than 300 million people of all ages across the world, depression causes immense suffering to people and their families, as well as placing a great economic cost on society.

According to the World Health Organization, mental health problems and stress-related disorders are a major health concern and the biggest overall cause of early death. Resulting from a complex interaction of social, psychological and biological factors, depression is often triggered by adverse life events such as unemployment, bereavement and psychological trauma. It can be debilitating for the affected person,  who functions poorly at work, at school and in the family.

Some of the root causes of depression are related to living and working conditions. For example, the working environment is a powerful determinant of health and has a significant impact on the employee’s mood.

To help businesses and experts design workplaces that encourage employee satisfaction and well-being, ISO has developed several international standards addressing the issues of ergonomics in the design of work systems.

Standard BAS EN ISO 6385, Ergonomic principles in the design of work system, provides core ergonomic principles for improvement, (re)design and modify working situations to make the workplace safer, more comfortable and more productive.

Another example is a series of standards BAS EN ISO 10075, Ergonomic principles related to mental workload, provides a system design guidelines specifically intended to prevent mental overload. Mental stress can result from many different and interacting factors including the requirements of the task, the physical conditions of the job, social and organizational factors or societal factors.

Another standard, ISO 27500, describes the values ​​and beliefs that make an organization human-centered, the significant business benefits that can be achieved and explains the risks for the organization of not being human-centered. Standard provides recommendations for the policies that executive board members need to implement to achieve this and sets out high-level human-centered principles for executive board members to endorse in order  to optimize performance, minimize risks to organizations and individuals, maximize well-being in their organization, and enhance their relationships with the customers.

Implementing a strong occupational health and safety management system is also another way organizations reduce accidents and ill health. ISO is also developing a an occupational health and safety  management system standard ISO 45001. The implementation of this management system is a strategic decision for an organization that can be used to support sustainability initiatives, ensuring people are safer and healthier and increase profitability at the same time.

Taken from www.iso.org.