UK - IOSH, Safety of young employees at work discussed at Eurosafe conference 03.08.2011
The safety of young employees at work was one of the workshops at the annual Eurosafe conference held in Budapest in June. It is an important issue as over half a million young workers were injured in the EU in 2007.
Jill Joyce from IOSH, UK, chaired the session. Latest statistics available from Eurostat indicate that although the occurrence of accidents decreased between 1999 and 2007 for workers aged 25 to 64, the occurrence of accidents increased in young workers aged 15 to 24.
In the session, Sarah Copsey (European Agency for Health and Safety at Work) outlined success factors in preventing risks to young workers, looking at evidence from four initiatives in European workplaces. Dr. Linda Miller (Institute for Employment Studies ) discussed how training, organisational factors and individual differences can influence risks to young workers. One factor is the quality of supervision, which has implications for supervisor training. Susanne Ulk (Consultant to Danish Teacher Trade Unions) described how safety and health awareness has been raised in Denmark. She described a web portal targeted at young workers but also containing information for parents, employers and schools. Possible policies were then discussed to increase the political profile of the injury issue and stakeholders identified that needed to contribute to this process.
A full report and details of presentations will be available at 3rd European Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion.
