How can we increase occupational safety?


Occupational safety

Even though the number of accidents has been falling over the past 20 years, Austria saw 108,572 workplace accidents that fell within the responsibility of safety officers in 2014 (STAT, 2015). The consequences are human suffering and high costs for companies. As experts on occupational safety, safety officers play an important role in analysing and preventing workplace hazards as well as in reducing the number of workplace accidents.

The cooperation with executive staff plays an equally important role. Safety officers often mention executive staff who have a negative attitude and a lack of competence as the reason for neglecting certain areas of occupational safety (Trimpop et al., 2011).

This project aims at finding out how safety officers collaborate with executive staff at companies, what role executive staff assign to safety officers and how safety officers assess their own role. Moreover, it aims at showing measures to strengthen the effectiveness and competences of safety officers. In the long run, it is our objective to investigate how the safety officers’ work affects occupational safety.

In four modules and by using a wide range of methods, including evaluations, case studies and longitudinal studies, we hope to gain insights that help strengthen the role of safety officers in companies.

 

Facts and figures

First results were presented at the 2017 Forum Prävention.