Background information

The Royal Technical University, Kungliga tekniska högskolan, KTH in Stockholm has increased the number of support calls to their occupational health care. Prior to COVID-19 employees were offered three calls to the occupational health care. During COVID-19, this has been expanded to ten calls. The employer is not required to know whether the employee is using the measure. Once the ten calls have been exceeded or if the employee asks for further help, the manager of the employee is informed.

Content of measure

With the COVID-19 crisis workers at KTH have experienced higher degree of anxiety, stress and pressure. Especially, since many have been working remotely.

In order to deal with anxiety workers have been able to receive conversational support through the university's occupational health care. The number of support calls an employee can receive was prior to COVID-19 three times. At first, this increased to six times during COVID-19. It than increased again. Workers can now contact the occupational health care up to ten times, without feedback to the manager or human resources department. After that an agreement between the occupational health service and the manager of the worker needs to be made for further calls.

The measure can be used by both workers and managers.

The conversations take place with behavioral scientists.

Research students with a scholarship (and who are therefore not employed) have the opportunity to contact student health if necessary.

Use of measure

KTH activities are separated into different Schools. Each of these is heading a number of Departments, Centres of excellence and undergraduate study programmes.

The schools are:

• School of Architecture and the Built Environment
• School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
• School of Engineering Sciences
• School of Engineering Sciences in Chemistry, Biotechnology and Health
• School of Industrial Engineering and Management

Together these five Schools employ 5,000 staff.

Contents

• Health and safety

Target groups

Workers	Businesses	Citizens
Employees in standard employment	Applies to all businesses	Applies to all citizens

Actors and funding

Actors	Funding
Company / Companies	No special funding required

Social partners

Social partners' role in designing the measure and form of involvement:

	Trade unions	Employers' organisations
Role	Agreed (outcome) incl. social partner initiative	Agreed (outcome) incl. social partner initiative
Form	Not applicable	Not applicable

Social partners' role in the implementation, monitoring and assessment phase:

• Social partners jointly
• Main level of involvement: N/A

Involvement

The increase in the number of visits for support calls applies until further notice and is a joint effort between the employer KTH and the local trade unions Saco-S, ST and Seko.

Views and reactions

The social partner's views on the measure is positive and they have been supportive of the measure.

Sectors and occupations

This case is not occupation-specific.

Sources

• 29 October 2020: Information for employees due to the coronavirus (Information till anställda pga Corona) (intra.kth.se)