Economic Incentives for Safe and Healthy Workplaces

Dietmar Elsler welcomed the participants on behalf of the Economic Incentives Project. Aim of the Agency with this project is to exchange expert knowledge between the member states, create a network and develop guidelines to promote economic incentives for OSH measures on national level.
Jos Verbeek welcomed the participants on behalf of the ECOSH project. The aim of the project is to put measures of organisational safety and health on a more scientific base. It brings together researchers, employers, unions, policymakers and other stakeholders. The EU has granted a subsidy for a concerted action on the economic dimension of occupational health and safety as part of its seventh research framework programme.
On behalf of the Directorate General for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities of the European Commission Malgorzata Stadnik welcomed the participants. She pointed out that the Community Strategy on Health and Safety at Work identifies economic incentives for prevention measures as levers for reinforcing the development of awareness and emphasized the importance of safe and healthy workplaces also in the economic crisis.

On behalf of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work the director Jukka Takala appreciated the attendance of the experts from both projects. He presented some new research data that was collected by the agency. A result from the Labour Force Survey 2007 of Eurostat estimates 8.6% of workers in the EU experienced work-related health problems in the last 12 months, which corresponds to 20 million persons. Bone joints or muscle problems, stress, anxiety and depression are the major health problems reported. A new study from Australia estimates that 5.9% of Australias GDP is lost because of work related health and safety aspects.
Mr. Takala pointed out that in the matter of work-related mortality the rate of fatal accidents is stable or slightly decreasing. But other causes as work related cancer (e.g. lung cancer connected to asbestos), circulatory diseases and work disability pensions, in particular caused by psychosocial reasons, are increasing.

During the last meeting of the Economic Incentives Network in February working groups were formed. Participants from the last meeting were active in working groups to further develop incentive schemes.

Liliana Frusteri from INAIL (Italian workers compensation authority) pointed out that her organisation is financing small and medium sized enterprises to improve compliance with occupational health and safety standards. A scheme is developed to offer economic incentives to the companies.

Henning Krüger from the German Fleischerei BG (butchery sector accident insurance) referred to the incentive system of his organisation in the German butchery sector. With this incentive system data was collected already for seven consecutive years since 2002. He emphasised that continuous improvements were found in work accident rates and occupational diseases. A significant reduction of costs for the insurance system was realized related to the program. Newly introduced in addition to the system was an employee award that was given to workers who introduced new prevention measures in their companies (this year in the field of noise protection).

Emile Tompa from the Institute for Work and Health in Ontario, Canada is doing data analysis on occupational safety and health measures to generate reliable evaluation standards. He also develops software for small and medium sized businesses that enables to collect data from non-scientists. The software helps economic evaluation of workplace interventions without needing evaluation experts in the companies.

Athos Charalambous from the Cyprus Safety and Health Association reported that a national conference in Cyprus was organized concerning the role of economic incentives for occupational health and safety. Cyprus has a private accident insurance system. He expressed his wish that the Economic Incentives Project will develop guidelines for the political level of the member states as a result.

Dietmar Elsler from the European Agency described in his presentation the information gathered and steps undertaken by the Economic Incentives project so far. Mr. Elsler gave an overview about the goals of the project. The project is based on two pillars. First the network of economic incentives organisations is giving input and advise on the Agency’s project by bringing together expert knowledge about analysis and evaluation of existing systems providing economic incentives for occupational safety and health (OSH) in Europe. Second the Topic Centre, consisting of a consortium of leading European OSH institutes, examines how enterprises and employers can be influenced and motivated to improve OSH and gives an overview about European policies and practises. The findings from the project are bound together in a report that is planned to be published in spring 2010. The report will offer good practice information in the form of case studies to help companies and other organisations in the development and provision of economic incentive schemes.

Summarising the findings of the report there was a strong argument in research literature for the benefits of economic incentives arising from sources outside a company to improve occupational health and safety. This finding is tempered by methodological difficulties in evaluating the effectiveness of various incentive schemes, and it was suggested that further research is required to clarify ambiguous results in the research literature.
Regarding the basic criteria of social insurance systems and worker’s compensation approaches there are not very many differences in Europe. Most countries designed their social security system in the Bismarckian tradition and the accident insurance institutions are based on a state-run monopoly. There is a significant group of countries with a competitive market in a Beveridgean system and two smaller groups of countries with mixed forms. So the variety of different accident insurance and social insurance system is fairly limited regarding basic criteria, even though there are probably many more differences in detail. Economic incentives in the form of subsidies, experience rating or tax incentives are feasible in all countries independent from the type of system used.

Jos Verbeek and Dietmar Elsler agreed that the joint workshop of EU-OSHA and ECOSH project has lead to a very useful collaboration for both organisations. As a specific result form this collaboration several joint publications are planned to be published in a special issue of the Scandinavian Journal for Work, Environment & Health.