Working together during the 2013 European Week for Safety and Health at Work
News release
The European Week for Safety and Health at Work is the biggest awareness-raising event of its kind, dedicated to improving the safety and health of Europe’s workplaces. The Week takes place from 21 to 25 October and is coordinated by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) and implemented by its partners in the EU’s 28 Member States and beyond.
The European Week focuses on broadcasting the key messages of the current Healthy Workplaces Campaign ‘Working together for risk prevention’. It provides a crucial focus for campaign activities and sees numerous events organised across Europe, highlighting the benefits of applying good leadership with worker participation.
Dr Christa Sedlatschek, Director of EU-OSHA, emphasises that ‘the most effective results in managing and improving the safety and health of an organisation are found when workers and their representatives are actively engaged with management — leadership alone is not enough. Enterprises with high worker participation combined with high management commitment are 10 times more likely to have a documented occupational safety and health (OSH) policy in place. The benefits of such an approach are enormous and include reduced business costs and increased productivity, fewer accidents and improved prevention and control of workplace risks.’
Activities during the European Week focus on encouraging managers to actively engage in risk reduction, and on encouraging workers, their representatives and other stakeholders to work with managers to reduce risks. EU-OSHA’s focal points and campaign partners help to coordinate the Week and organise events across Europe.
A dedicated campaign website provides numerous practical tools that can help organisations to improve OSH management and worker participation in the workplace.
For example, a number of preventive solutions intended for the construction, healthcare, and hotel, restaurant and catering sectors include checklists that can be used by managers and employees in these industries.
Also, employers and workers can find motivation for carrying out such action from EU-OSHA’s case studies, which provide excellent examples of the effective management of safety and health. The case studies are taken from a diverse range of industries and sectors, and are stored in an online and easily searchable database.
The OSH campaign toolkit provides ideas and examples of how to convey the campaign messages most effectively.
(Date: Oct 21, 2013)
Links:
Find out about events and activities from your local focal point
Practical tools
Preventive solutions
Case studies
