Difficulties in addressing health and safety, by country: the complexity of legal obligations (% establishments)
The levels of psychosocial risks in European workplaces are high, with 77 % of establishments reporting at least one psychosocial risk factor in the workplace.
(PRWEB UK) 30 March 2016
Following on from the ‘First findings’ and ‘Summary’ reports, this report presents an overview of the key findings for each of these topics and shows that significant differences by country are a recurring pattern in the findings.
The levels of psychosocial risks in European workplaces are high, with 77 % of establishments reporting at least one psychosocial risk factor in the workplace. The most common is having to deal with difficult customers, patients, pupils, etc. (reported by 58 % of establishments), which is fairly closely followed by time pressures (reported by 43 %). In addition, ESENER-2 shows that 41 % of establishments in the EU-28 state that they indeed do not have enough information on how to assess psychosocial risks.
Furthermore, among all EU-28 establishments with 20 or more workers, 33 % report having in place an action plan to prevent work-related stress. This is most frequently reported by establishments in the United Kingdom (57 %) as well as in Romania, Denmark, Sweden and Italy (around 50 %). In contrast, less than 10 % of establishments in the Czech Republic and Estonia state that they have such an action plan in place.
Christa Sedlatschek highlighted ESENER-2’s findings on the importance of worker participation in managing OSH: ‘The second enterprise survey has confirmed the findings of the first: worker participation is vital in implementing safety and health measures at work — 85 % of establishments with formal employee representation carry out risk assessments, but this worryingly drops to only 64 % of establishments without such representation. It is also particularly important for workers to be involved in psychosocial risk management, as the very nature of these risks makes them difficult to talk about, making collaboration from all parties even more essential.’
The most commonly reported reason for addressing OSH in general is to fulfil legal obligations (reported by 85 % of establishments in the EU-28). Legislation is a key driver to address OSH at work, even though for some enterprises (around 40% in the EU) legal obligations are regarded to be a major difficulty when addressing health and safety. However, it is worth pointing out that there are significant country differences suggesting a very diverse perception on the complexity of legal obligations depending on the national context.
The data from ESENER-2 can also now be explored through the interactive survey dashboard. The dashboard allows users to visualise the data, breaking the dataset down by question, country, sector and establishment size. Any chart can be downloaded and shared on social media.
Links:
Read the full ESENER-2 overview report
See the ESENER-2 summary for an outline of the survey (available in 25 languages)
Explore the ESENER-2 data using the interactive survey dashboard
