Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Mexico. November 13th, 2017.

REF: Official Mexican Standard 035 (NOM 035) Psychosocial Risk Factors Regulation

On October 26th, 2016, the Mexican Ministry of Labor and Social Security (“MLSS”) published on the Official Gazette the regulation for the Official Mexican Standard PROY-NOM-035-STPS-2016 titled “Identification and Prevention of Psychosocial Risk Factors”. The regulation establishes the conditions that shall be adopted in the workplace.

As a result of the referred regulation, businesses with more than 15 employees are obliged to conduct a study that shows the psychosocial risk factors involving the emotional health of the workers, work and economic stress, harassment and violence at the work place, and addictions, etc.

It is important to state that in order to comply with the abovementioned, a simple diagnose, measurement, or study will not suffice, it requires a guided process in order for the businesses to truly identify the psychosocial risk factors that affect the worker´s health and well-being, which would consequently imply the creation of various action programs that will prevent and generate a more conscious approach to health issues in order to avoid costs of work related accidents and diseases, improving the employee’s productivity and their overall quality of life.

As a result of the above mentioned, the MLSS, will adopt a protocol suggested by the International Labor Organization (“ILO”) through the National Program for Emotional wellbeing and Human Development at work, therefore, in order to reassure our commitment to providing you quality services, our team is currently obtaining the certification to execute and implement the referred activities pursuant the
authority’s guidelines.

The aforesaid is important because the MLSS will conduct inspections to assure that the regulation in alliance with the program of the ILO has been implemented and that those who act advisors must comply with the corresponding certificates.

To this day the regulation has not been published on the Official Gazette, thus we inform you that on October 27th, we performed a direct consultation before the MLSS in Mexico City regarding the status of the Official Mexican Standard 035.

Due to the abovementioned, the MLSS informed us that the Final Regulation will be published during the current year, therefore, once this takes place we will inform you promptly about its content, however, we suggest that briefly you engage in the self-diagnosis stage in order to be prepared for its adequate implementation.