About the survey

:: European Survey of Enterprises on New and Emerging Risks (ESENER)
:: Support for policy makers
:: Support for researchers
:: Support for workplaces
:: Support for other Agency activities
:: Project team

European Survey of Enterprises on New and Emerging Risks (ESENER)

EU-OSHA's Europe-wide establishment survey asks managers and workers' health and safety representatives about how health and safety risks are managed at their workplace, with a particular focus on the newer 'psychosocial risks', such as work-related stress, violence and harassment. The survey aims to assist workplaces across Europe to deal more effectively with health and safety and to promote the health and well-being of employees. To this end it provides policy makers with cross-nationally comparable information relevant for the design and implementation of new policies in this field.

The survey, which involves approximately 36,000 interviews and covers 31 countries, has the support of governments and social partners at European level. For EU-OSHA, this project represents one of its most important initiatives to date and is expected to provide valuable information for use over several years.

Support for policy makers

Through the framework Directive 89/391/EEC and its individual directives, European Union legislation provides the basis for workers in Europe to enjoy high levels of health and safety at the workplace. Implementation of these provisions differs from one country to another and their practical application varies according to sector, category of worker and size of enterprise. The increasingly important 'emerging' risks, such as stress, violence and harassment, fall clearly within the existing regulatory framework, but nonetheless pose a challenge to policy makers in their development of effective prevention measures.

In asking questions directly to managers and workers about the way occupational safety and health (OSH) is managed, ESENER aims to identify important success factors and to highlight the principal obstacles to effective prevention. The survey investigates what enterprises do in practice to manage health and safety; what are their main reasons for taking action; what holds them back; and what support they need. As well as looking at management of OSH in general, the approach taken by enterprises to the management of psychosocial risks is also examined.

Emerging risks such as work-related stress, violence and harassment present enterprises with a significant challenge and require an appropriate response on the part of policy makers. The results of the survey will improve the effectiveness of preventive actions by helping to ensure that they are comprehensive, targeted, and that they focus on the key issues.

Involvement of workers is a further aspect of the management of safety and health at work that is described by ESENER. With a separate interview directed at health and safety representatives, the results give a valuable insight into the nature and extent of worker involvement in OSH management and highlight the importance of worker involvement as a factor in the successful implementation of preventive measures at the workplace level.

Support for researchers

The results of the survey provide some immediate, clear messages; however, much of the information that is most important to policy makers only comes to light following more detailed analyses. With approximately 53 'content' questions in the management interview and a further 34 in the health and safety representative interview, researchers play a key role in interpreting the data produced by ESENER.

The survey provides researchers with comparable data that enables better analyses to be made of, for example, approaches to prevention, attitudes to safety and health, or involvement of workers across Europe, by different variables, such as sector or size class. The data from the 36,000 interviews are available free of charge to researchers (see the section 'Further information').

Information on the results of in-depth analyses of the ESENER data is available in the publications section.

The methodology and specifications used by ESENER are in line with those used in the establishment surveys of the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions (Eurofound).

Support for workplaces

Although ESENER's main benefits to workplaces should result from better interventions from policy-makers, enterprises are able to use the survey questions directly at workplace level to set a benchmark and to compare their own OSH management practices with those for their country, sector or size class.

Support for other Agency activities

As the most important provider of information on safety and health at work at the European level, EU-OSHA will use the results of ESENER to focus its campaigns more effectively on the key issues for enterprises. The 2008-2009 European campaign in particular benefited from up-to-date information on how enterprises carry out risk assessment in practice and from the identification of needs for support and of the main difficulties encountered.

Project team