• Project number: F 2532
• Institution: Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA)
• Status: Completed Project

Description:

How do companies organise their occupational safety and health provision? To what extent are employees' psychosocial risks taken into account? Do companies carry out risk assessments and do they take suitable preventive measures on this basis? Project F 2532 sought to answer these questions by analysing data from the German sub-samples of the 2009, 2014, and 2019 ESENER surveys. Descriptive analyses, time series comparisons, and multivariate correlation analyses were carried out.

The results show that whether psychosocial risks are identified in risk assessments and preventive measures are taken depends on various factors, such as the size of the company, the economic sector, or the industry. If companies already have well-organised occupational safety and health (OSH) systems, psychosocial risks to employees are more likely to be taken into account in risk assessments. If psychosocial risks are assessed in a company, it is more likely that appropriate prevention measures will actually be implemented.

However, it has also been shown that a significant proportion of companies take targeted measures to deal with psychosocial risks without risk assessments. Based on a large, representative data set, the project results underpin the observation made in qualitative research projects that companies also take targeted risk-prevention measures beyond the structures and standards of institutional occupational safety and health.

Overall, the analyses carried out during the project have further consolidated and expanded the empirically based knowledge available about factors that influence workplace prevention practice. One key finding is that looking solely at the company's OSH and risk assessment systems is not sufficient to adequately record and evaluate the implementation of workplace measures, in particular for dealing with psychosocial risks. When data are collected in future for the exploration and evaluation of workplace prevention practice, it is therefore recommended that, in addition to information on the organisation of workplace OSH, information about the specific risk-prevention measures taken within a company should also be collected.