Improving safety at work for low-skilled and high-risk work

Employees with a low level of education are faced with unsafe working conditions more often than their better educated counterparts. At the same time the lower end of the labour market is evolving rapidly, with workers from new EU member states increasingly being taken on to do low-skilled and generally risky work. Existing approaches to stimulate behavioural change and safe behaviour on the work floor fail to devote explicit attention to the considerable diversity of this group of low-skilled employees, and their different perceptions of work and safety in terms of age, language, culture, religion, gender, and also health status. The aim of the study was to ascertain whether safety interventions can be better geared to the work floor. This will be achieved by appreciating the scale of the problem and by understanding the experiences of this particular group and their perceptions of work and risk. A large dataset representative of the working population in the Netherlands was analysed to establish the problem of safety among low-skilled employees. In addition, an exploratory study into current practices on the work floor was conducted, mainly as part of participative safety programmes, that were aimed at the prevention of unsafe conditions in low-skilled work. The following sectors were represented: construction, transport, agriculture (greenhouse horticulture) and the cleaning industry. Knowledge of diverse disciplines, such as safety sciences, human resource policy, social innovation, occupational psychology and health promotion was accumulated to develop a theoretical framework of do’s and don’ts for interventions. Key aspects of the framework for low-skilled and high-risk work are awareness of risks, motivation, knowledge and skills, control options (actual task opportunities in the working environment) and assurance (lasting change). Parties that exert an influence were also determined. In addition to the low skilled employees themselves, the influencing parties are the peer group, (immediate) management and the organization or branch.