DIM Gestes - International Symposium, Paris, June 10 and 11, 2013

1. DIM Gestes - International Symposium, Paris, June 10 and 11, 2013 Changing work and working conditions: how can suffering be relieved, risk factors eradicated, and work “cared for and cured”? When labour inspectors and work supervisors take care of their work in order to improve their own health as well as the others’ : A different course of action Emmanuelle Reille-Baudrin & Mylène Zittoun Occupational Psychology and Clinic of Activity Team, CRTD-CNAM- EA4132. Under the direction of Prof. Yves Clot

2. Context • Within the national framework of the Mental health in the workplace, a regional department of labour inspectorate requested the research team’s help Occupational health: historical missions A doubly exposed position : • Every day, they take care of the employees’ health… • … which has an impact on their own health • From request for tools to action request : “The labour inspectorate faced withoccupational risksrelated to mental health issues in the workplace” • Since 2008, there have been new developments and the intervention is still in progress How can an intervention affect the suffering that every employee experiences ? What are the practical implications on the profession, the work organisation and the field?

3. A field also coping with tragedies which impacted the intervention In 2004, in Saussignac (Dordogne, France) two control officers were murdered whileperforming their official duties. It was the first time such a thing happened: it represented a divide in the history of the profession In 2011 and 2012, two labour inspectors committed suicide

4. Methodology • Transforming the work situations with co-analysis, professional debates • Setting up frameworks for dialogue designed to support the exchanges • Starting from the ordinary work activities • Setting up debates about the quality of work: a health condition • Setting up debates about the quality of work at all levels

5. An indirect method of intervention: the instruction to the double (Oddone, 1997 ; Clot, 2008) “Imagine that I have to stand in for you tomorrow in the situation you chose, what instructions would you provide me with so nobody would know that I’m a substitute ?” • Groups of professionals: same job, same hierarchy level, volunteers • Analyzing action in order to transform it • Confrontation to one’s own ways of working, via collective debates focused on the details of the activity in order to emancipate from them • Encouraging practices' disparity • Creating new ways of acting, an energy which is source of vitality for the profession • New development ideas for the organization

6. Starting point of a debate: instruction to the double about the summoning of an employer M: It’s not that easy… The employer might be afraid, because he might have been convicted before D: Can I feel that he’s afraid? Standing a few meters away from him ? M: It is not easy because you are not so comfortable yourself D: Can he see that I’m afraid ? M: You have to act in a specific way so that he doesn’t notice: don’t come to him immediately, stop when you’re standing two or three metersaway, call him because he has to make the effort of standing up: you’re the one who summoned him, not the contrary. Look into his eyes but without seeming threatening...

7. The group debates about fear and defense against it  • “I have experience, so why this staging?” • “My toolkit is full of set phrases. They all have their function, like tools. I would feel so naked if I didn’t have these weapons in my armoury. I know I have them, and thanks to them I feel less pressured. I don’t show any sign of fear or aggressiveness so I feel less in danger.” They are surprised to learn about the inter and intra-personal diversity of the ways they react • “We all have our toolkit. While listening to the others, I realized that one person doesn’t use the same tools all the time, for instance if we work on a construction site or in aDow 30-listed company. Our toolkits are varied.”

8. Facing fear and murder... reunion Even though some of them had faced violence or an assault before, savagery remained subdued: • “Even if you know that they see you as a spoilfraud, such an assault seemed unlikely to happen.” • “The colleagues had some experience, their toolkit was full of different tools” • “You ask him to bring you a piece of paper, he fetches it, comes back with a gun and bang!” • “All the barriers you made to protect yourself fall apart. » • “You realize that it can happen to anyone, the barriers tumble down. »

9. A dynamic bond: being able to cope with fear without denying it “Working with you, you don’t reject all the manly maxims which protect you against fear, you face them. I don’t feel like regretting I learnt them anymore, like the waste of a difficult job. I want to be able to keep them in my armoury, without any illusion, like language elements of what might become just a game with our job restraints.”

10. Clinical effects • The deadly residuals of these tragedies, buried in everyone’s memory, take a different meaning and become a resource in the practice : “Thanks to what you achieved, the straits of our job might become desirable. That is significant!” • The individual stories are overstepped to collectively give another future to these tragedies: “It is a bit like decoding; it is clarifying: suddenly things fall into place. It helps to express feelings and perceptions which are often buried under denial, difficult to say and therefore, people keep quiet about them, hark back to them, hold them in.”

11. Effects at management level • Displacement of these debates in a broad range of contexts • Widening of the dialogue in two regions • Development of the debates between volunteers and managers • Development of the debates about the quality of work at all levels • Joint project professionals-managers: • Presenting together this work in both regions • Feedback of this work at a ministerial level • Experimenting this approach in different regions, with different professions

12. Conclusion • Using an indirect method of intervention the instruction to the double • Making the subjectivity an object of collective debate with professional debates • Multiplying the contexts of enunciation • Bringing about displacements in one’s activity relation which brings about emotional movements • Collective creation of individual resources • Acting on affectivity : a mean to develop work and health • The course of the action is to built the environment so that the workers can take care of their work in order to improve their own health