Couriers who deliver food and drinks via digital platforms face a significant risk of work-related stress, with the way platforms direct their work through algorithms playing a substantial role. This is the finding of a study by Spain’s National Institute for Safety and Health at Work (INSST), published on 23 September 2026, based on 804 couriers across Spain. Although the research focuses on the Spanish market, platform-based delivery has become a global phenomenon: the same business models and the same management systems are used in dozens of countries, from North America to Latin America and the rest of Europe.
What did the INSST investigate?
The study ran during 2024 and 2025 and mapped how couriers work, which working conditions specifically apply to platform work, how algorithmic management plays out in practice, and to what extent this group is exposed to psychosocial risk factors. It also examined the resulting health effects. The researchers gathered both sociodemographic data and information on couriers’ day-to-day work experience, in order to build a complete picture of an occupational group whose working conditions have so far received little systematic study.
Algorithmic management as a stress factor
A central finding is that exposure to psychosocial risk factors among platform couriers is considerable, and that the way platforms assign tasks, evaluate performance and enforce availability through algorithms plays a substantial role in this. In platform work, it is typically not a manager but an automated system that determines when a courier receives an assignment, how quickly it must be completed, and whether the courier remains eligible for further assignments. Couriers often have little insight into exactly how that evaluation is arrived at, which according to the INSST contributes to the stress they experience. The study thus provides empirical data on an exposure and its associated health consequences among an occupational group that remains underexposed in the regular occupational health and safety statistics of many countries, partly because couriers are often classified as self-employed and therefore fall outside classic employee research.
Context
The European Union already recognised the risks of automated management with the Platform Work Directive (EU) 2024/2831, which entered into force at the end of 2024 and requires EU member states to organise human oversight of algorithmic decisions affecting the working conditions of platform workers, with transparency about the systems used as a starting point. Member states must transpose the directive into national law by 2 December 2026 at the latest. As an EU member state, Spain falls under the same obligation, which makes the INSST’s findings directly relevant to how the country shapes that transposition.
For employers, platform companies and regulators outside Spain, the study underscores that psychosocial risks in platform work are not an isolated Spanish problem, but are linked to a business model that is organised in a similar way worldwide. This also makes the results useful as a reference point for occupational health research and policymaking in other countries where platform delivery involves a large and growing group of workers.
Source: Factores de riesgo psicosocial en el colectivo de repartidores de comida y bebida que operan mediante plataformas digitales: conclusiones estudio 2024-2025, 23 September 2026
Additional source consulted: Directive (EU) 2024/2831 of the European Parliament and of the Council on improving working conditions in platform work
