Anticipating the psychosocial factors effects in social LCA Session: Social Life Cycle Assessment (S-LCA)–theoretical and applicative aspects

The public and private decision-makers are showing an increasing interest in the environmental and social consequences. However, in the social field, a method equivalent environmental LCA remains largely to be built.The purpose of the work is to set up a new theoretical model, and an assessment grid, to allow us to anticipate damage to health of workers (involved in the life cycle) caused by psychosocial risk factors at work. We will take into account improvements caused by the positive psychosocial factors too. However, we do not study the effects of pollutants, radiations and other dangerous items, because they have been dealt with in environmental LCA (for some models) in order to account for the “Human health” impact. We study frequent risk factors that are linked with the organisation of work itself. There is a "human cost of stress in the workplace", which is different between the various sectors and the different ways of organizing work.The work is based on an unconventional approach. In fact, traditionally, health is considered ex post and based on personal risk factors of individuals. Theanticipatory approachof the work, on the other hand, identifiesgroups of workers considered to beat risk because of psychosocial risk factors to which they are exposed.The outputs of the work will contribute to anticipate damages to health. They will help decision makers to choose the best scenario for the production organisation as far as possible.The expected results from the work also will strengthen the research program in the social life cycle assessment in order to provide a new "method of evaluation" (or "pathway") between psychosocial factors of the work and health of workers engaged in the life cycle of the company.