Launch of the campaign on risk assessment

“Healthy Workplaces. Good for you. Good for business” – is the slogan of the communication campaign on occupational risk assessment, carried out by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work. Its Polish edition was launched at the European Commission’s Delegation in Warsaw during a meeting with journalists on 25 June 2008. It was also attended by Bożena Borys-Szopa, Chief Labour Inspector.

The campaign in Poland is coordinated by the Central Institute for Labour Protection-National Research Institute. Its Director, Prof. Danuta Koradecka said that occupational risk assessment is a duty introduced by the “Labour Code”. Unfortunately, according to data of the Central Statistical Office, at present only 37.7% of companies meet this duty. In many cases it is fulfilled purely formally, without a deeper analysis and complete identification of risks. Due to lack of such an assessment, every week 9 workers die in work accidents in Poland, every week 230 work accidents are registered, and every week 70 new cases of occupational diseases are diagnosed. The total cost for us is about 20 billion zlotys in the annual budget, not to mention loss in terms of humane values. It is, therefore necessary to reach the general public with information about the significance of proper risk assessment.

The above diagnosis is confirmed by the NLI’s many-year inspection experience, which Bożena Borys-Szopa referred to in her speech. From the labour inspectorate’s perspective, reliable and comprehensive occupational risk assessment is an invaluable tool for creating safe working conditions and their systematic improvement. NLI’s inspection and supervisory experience shows that this tool is too rarely used in practice because employers still do not understand the essence of occupational risk assessment, and especially its objective. They often approach it as a formal requirement only, which has to be fulfilled in order to be able to present relevant documents to inspection and supervisory authorities.

Almost half of employers inspected by the NLI in the period from 2004 to 2007 were unable to mention any practical application of risk assessment. They did not comprehend a direct relationship between the results of risk assessment and working conditions as well as the necessity to implement preventive activities. This problem is particularly noticeable in small companies which do not have the duty to establish OSH services, and risk assessment is commissioned to external individuals, who do not sufficiently know technological processes used in enterprises and, what’s still worse, do not even visit the assessed workstations. Employers often lack knowledge to carry out such assessments in a reliable manner. The labour inspectorate has already developed a uniform training module on occupational risk assessment. It will be the basis of training for employers organized in the current year in all District Labour Inspectorates.

The campaign “Healthy Workplaces” is targeted at employers, employees, trade unions and social labour inspectors, institutions dealing with OSH, specialists and practitioners in this field, training companies, teachers and pupils, lawmakers, institutions and organizations active in the sphere of labour protection and interested in improving risk assessment at workplace level.

The campaign will last to the end of 2008 and throughout 2009; it will include two European Safety Weeks in October 2008 and in October 2009, and it will be finalised with an occupational risk assessment “summit” in November 2009.