Healthy Workforce Key to Sustainable Recovery Says Europe OSHA

The European workforce's well-being is key to a sustainable economic recovery, according to the head of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA).

 

 

Introducing his last annual report as agency director, Dr. Jukka Takala emphasized the danger that the economic crisis might push people out of employment permanently, and huge numbers may find themselves excluded from the job market because of long-term ill health. “For the whole of the E.U., we can estimate the production loss from people being excluded from work on health and disability grounds at Є30,000 billion – every year. For comparison, the emergency measures that were introduced to stabilize the Greek economy cost in the range of Є110 billion, and those for Ireland, Є85 billion, just as a one-off.” (WCxKit)

 

 

According to Dr. Takala, it is important that future economic growth should be inclusive, creating conditions that enable people to continue at work, safely and healthily. “We need to ensure not just that current jobs are safe, healthy, and productive; we should strive towards a safe, healthy, productive, sustainable, satisfying, and motivating working life,” he said.

 

 

The 2010 annual report emphasizes the ways in which the agency has continued to work to protect the safety and health of European workers, in spite of these difficult economic conditions. One highlight has been the opening of the Healthy Workplaces Campaign on Safe Maintenance – the agency’s two-year health and safety campaigns are now the largest of their kind in the world. The Safe Maintenance Campaign has seen record numbers of partner organizations involved.

 

 

The agency also published results of the European Survey of Enterprises on New and Emerging Risks (ESENER), which, for the first time, provide real-time data from enterprises across Europe on what they are doing to tackle occupational risks (specifically psychosocial risks).

 

 

Another highlight of 2010 was the agency piloting the Online interactive Risk Assessment tool (OiRA), the legacy of the Healthy Workplaces Campaign on Risk Assessment 2008-09. The OiRA tool, which the agency is making available for free, will help many thousands of small companies across the E.U. carry out risk assessments in a simple and cost-effective way.

 

 

Looking ahead, 2011 will be the second year of the Safe Maintenance Campaign, including the closing event in November.(WCxKit)
 

 

The agency continues with the detailed study of the results of the ESENER survey, and planning is has begun for the 2012-13 Healthy Workplaces Campaign on the subject of working together for risk prevention.