Organisational psychology: Prof. Dr Franziska Kößler – Dangerous work
2025-11-18
From harvest workers to temporary agency workers to prostitutes: many working people face an impossible choice – between their health and their economic livelihood. Industrial and organisational psychologist Franziska Kößler researches precarious employment and the so-called employment-health dilemma.
At the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, protective clothing was in short supply – and was mostly reserved for medical staff. ‘A cleaner told me about her work in a hospital. She was significantly less well protected, even though she worked in the same rooms as nurses and doctors, for example,’ reports Franziska Kößler, junior professor of psychology, specialising in the transformation of the world of work.
Those who clean, build or harvest often bear the greatest risk – not only to their own health, but also to their jobs. However, precarious employment no longer affects only marginalised groups in the labour market, but is a global phenomenon that puts pressure on people in a wide variety of circumstances.
Precarious forms of employment are also widespread in this country. ‘Above all, so-called flexible forms of employment, such as temporary work, undermine many social achievements,’ warns Franziska Kößler. The situation is even more dramatic in sex work: ‘Women are exposed to violence and health risks. Many would like to get out, but it is difficult,’ explains the researcher.
Her research combines qualitative interviews with quantitative surveys. She is currently developing a questionnaire to transfer the findings from previous qualitative studies to larger population groups. The aim is to find out how widespread such employment-health dilemmas actually are – and which industries are particularly affected. ‘When people have to choose between two negative options, it creates enormous emotional stress – and that can make them ill,’ explains the psychologist.
However, precarious working conditions do not only affect economically disadvantaged groups. Dangerous dependencies can also arise in supposedly privileged professions, for example in highly hierarchical systems: ‘Many people know that they are in a toxic situation, but they stay because leaving would jeopardise their career.’
How freely a person can actually decide depends on many factors: Is the employment relationship temporary? Are there financial obligations? ‘People with pre-existing health conditions, insufficient insurance coverage or family members to care for are under particular pressure,’ explains the researcher.
Franziska Kößler studied psychology at the Universities of Innsbruck and Heidelberg. From 2017 to 2019, she was a scholarship holder at the doctoral programme ‘Good Work: Approaches to Shaping Tomorrow's Working World’ at the Berlin Social Science Centre (WZB), funded by the Hans Böckler Foundation, and received her doctorate from Humboldt University in Berlin in 2023. A research stay took her to the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health in Cincinnati, USA, as a visiting scholar in 2018/2019. After completing her doctorate, she worked as a junior researcher at the University of Freiburg and as an associate researcher at the Chair of Occupational Health Psychology at Humboldt University in Berlin. Since 2024, she has been a junior professor of psychology, specialising in the transformation of the world of work, at Leuphana University in Lüneburg.