Healthy working lives in healthy businesses: new OSH strategy for small enterprises?

Occupational safety and health (OSH) is an area concerned with protecting the safety, health and welfare of people engaged in work or employment. Successful and productive companies around the world look after the safety and health of their workers and follow certain principles of good practice for the prevention of occupational accidents and diseases. Massey University of New Zealand hosted in February 2013 interdisciplinary conference “Understanding small enterprises” (USE Conference). Conference had a dual aim of improving both well-being of the worker (healthy working lives) and equally of the business (healthy business). This contribution represents commentary on the Second Global Interdisciplinary Conference “Understanding small enterprises” in Nelson, New Zealand, 19–22 February 2013. There are more definitions of small businesses, one of them defines it as those which employ fewer than 20 staff. Small businesses are a substantial majority of the businesses in every major industrial sector, including dangerous sectors such as forestry, fishing, agriculture, construction, and mining (in 2007, 89% of U.S. firms had less than 20 employees and 79% had less than 10). Several studies suggest that workers in smaller businesses endure a disproportionate share of the burden of occupational injuries, illnesses and fatalities. Evidence indicates that resource deficiency, isolation, low probability of inspection, and innacurate perceptions of illness and injury incidence rates because of low frequency reduce motivation to engage in prevention activities among owner/operators in small enterprises. Thomas R. Cunningham et al. (NIOSH, United States of America) presented advancing research on delivering workplace health and safety to small businesses. In the United States, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is the federal agency responsible for conducting research and making recommendations for the prevention of work-related injury and illness. The NIOSH Small Business Assistance and Outreach Program is working toward the development and evaluation of a model for reaching small businesses with workplace health and safety information and practical tools for occupational safety and health programme development. Research on the unique characteristics of small businesses that affect safety and health activities has been unfocused and largely descriptive. The author underlined two critical areas which must be addressed to move small business OSH research forward: small-business construct explication issues and intervention marketing from a social-systems perspective. Occupational risks are covered by social security legislation in European countries. Hans-Juergen Bischoff (the International Social Security Association ISSA, Machine and System Safety Section, Germany) presented the importance of return to work and prevention of occupational risks on examples from Europe with focus on small businesses. The kind of insured events and extent/range of benefits may be quite different, and, depending on the kind of event, the number of responsible insurers may also differ. Prevention, rehabilitation, compensation represents a structure that usually makes the responsible body to invest particularly in prevention. This is the best chance to focus on selected 1) target groups, normally at high risks: branches/sectors with a high accident rate or high health risks (for example construction, agriculture, nurses) or 2) groups of workers (young and inexperienced). Losses resulting from occupational accidents and occupational diseases amount to about 4% of gross national product. In a world with a growing need for qualified workers also the potential loss, temporary or permanent, of such people needs to be tackled for social and economic reasons. New ISSA guidelines “Return to Work” and “Workplace Health Promotion” are based on the experiences of ISSA-members. The ISSA-Special Commission on Prevention with its 13 international Sections has decided to plan and put to work a working programme specifically for small enterprises. This was mainly due to similar facts worldwide: the high number of small enterprises (about 90% of all enterprises) and their limited resources. The first international project was aimed at young and inexperienced workers because they have accident rates at least two times higher than the average working population. The website also includes a self-assessment for small businesses, based on the keys to success.