Understanding the impact of a changing world of work and advancing occupational safety and health instruments

BAuA's monitoring of the world of work will concentrate on central issues in the field of occupational safety and health. The methods used to collect data will include repeated cross-sectional surveys and empirical longitudinal surveys. BAuA's large-scale data collections and data-based studies concentrate on thematic areas relevant to its work and constitute a unique selling point for the Federal Institute. This monitoring is a central instrument with which to generate research questions and hypotheses, and so analyse the impacts societal and technological developments are having on the world of work. It also forms the foundation on which policy options for political decision makers and design recommendations for workplace practice can be developed. Following the establishment of its Research Data Centre (Forschungsdatenzentrum), BAuA will make its own datasets available for science-based applications, so promoting scientific cooperation.

The data gathered will, not least, help to clarify questions about the appropriateness and efficiency of OSH instruments and structures, including preventive occupational healthcare.

Research projects in this field of action

Reporting on the world of work

BAuA's reporting activities continue to have the aim of describing the world of work with suitable, up-to-date indicators, and using them both to construct hypotheses in research and as a central basis for the provision of policy advice.

For this purpose, BAuA will regularly gather data that, when combined with secondary data, facilitate the best possible description of the world of work and how it is developing. Additionally, BAuA will make use of relevant surveys in this thematic field and contribute to the collection of data by cooperation partners, for example in order to look at the impacts the increased use of AI-based technologies has on the changes happening in the world of work.

In its role as the Coordination and Information Office for the Minimum Wage (Geschäftsstelle für den gesetzlichen Mindestlohn), BAuA is responsible for regularly evaluating the minimum wage’s impacts on issues such as the development of pensions and the situation of people who claim benefits under Book II of the Social Code (Sozialgesetzbuch, SGB).

As part of the scientific community, BAuA will pursue the aim of further expanding the Research Data Centre’s provision of data on the world of work. This will contribute to the continuing development of the research data infrastructure in Germany.

Research projects

Impacts of occupational safety and health instruments and measures

The investigations carried out into the effectiveness of occupational safety and health instruments and measures will range across various thematic areas. These will include the determinants and aspects of prevention cultures in small enterprises and microbusinesses, and the gathering and presentation of information about the effectiveness of inspection activities. Furthermore, regulatory decisions at the interface between chemical safety and occupational safety and health will be evaluated by looking at the example of the restriction of diisocyanates, while the research into psychosocial risk assessment and management will be continued. Here, the focus will be placed on methodologies, actors, the conditions under which action is taken in workplace practice, and model projects relating to SMEs.

Recommendations on the promotion of individual self-regulation (behavioural prevention) will be drawn up to supplement preventive situational measures and OSH instruments.

Research projects

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