Press Release - 14/06/2016 - 01:45 - EU-OSHA’s Annual report 2015: adapting to change and the risks and challenges this brings
Featuring both achievements and challenges, 2015 was another eventful year for the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA). The Annual report 2015 outlines the highlights of the year, which were characterised by anticipating and adapting to change in the world of work, and tackling the risks and challenges emerging from these changes. The year also saw the close of EU-OSHA’s Healthy Workplaces Manage Stress campaign.
Director of EU-OSHA, Christa Sedlatschek, highlighted how change was an underlying theme of 2015: ‘More and more, work is being relocated outside traditional workplaces, workplaces are becoming increasingly competitive, and technologies are developing rapidly. And demographic change is seeing Europe’s workforce ageing. It is therefore important that we are adaptable to these changes and work together to achieve the best outcomes possible. In this vein, in 2015, EU-OSHA published expert review articles on three new and emerging risks and their impact on occupational safety and health (OSH): crowdsourcing,performance-enhancing drugs and robotics.’
The year was an important time for one of EU-OSHA’s flagship projects, the European Survey of Enterprises on New and Emerging Risks (ESENER). Theresults of ESENER-2 show that the most widespread risks in European workplaces are psychosocial risks (e.g. 58 % of workplaces in the EU report that difficult customers are a risk factor) and those related to musculoskeletal disorders (e.g. 56 % report tiring or painful working positions). ESENER-2 also highlights the importance of risk assessment in tackling risks. These results can now easily be explored using EU-OSHA’s new interactive online survey dashboard.
In September, the main findings of EU-OSHA’s important pilot project on older workers, ‘Safer and healthier work at any age’, were presented to policy-makers, OSH professionals and social partner representatives in Brussels. During this conference, discussion sessions focused on ageing, OSH and gender, and rehabilitation and return-to-work systems.
page source https://osha.europa.eu/
