In 2001-2003, the Swedish Work Environment Authority (SWEA) ran a project to develop better methods to inspect psychosocial risk factors at work. The objective was twofold: to develop methods to enable most inspectors to effectively inspect such health risks, and to set a standard for method development within SWEA. This article presents our evaluation of the project and a discussion of this as an example of regulatory implementation. The methods project largely failed. Major reasons were the lack of general provisions on psychosocial risks, isolation from other policies in SWEA that affect the inspection of such risks, and a lack of engagement and guidance by top management on how to prioritize and conduct this very challenging development project. Underlying this was possibly a preoccupation with other major internal reforms, a limited competence and an unwillingness to challenge the employers on psychosocial and organizational issues within SWEA's top management. Yet, the project probably had some indirect positive effects by raising awareness within the authority of psychosocial risk factors, of the complexities of inspecting such risks and of the difficulty to develop effective methods to supervise them.
One of the widely recognised challenges to institutional arrangements for representing workers in workplace health and safety concerns workplace size. In virtually all surveys of the coverage of these arrangements, representation is shown to be increasingly difficult in smaller workplaces. In this respect regional safety representatives have been a success story in Sweden in supporting occupational health and safety in small workplaces since the mid 1970s. Unions may by law appoint them for all workplaces where there is at least one member of a trade union and where there is not already a joint occupational health and safety committee.
Based on the findings of several surveys undertaken in Sweden this chapter first describes the functioning of the regional representatives scheme, its support and why it has been successful. It goes on to analyse the extent to which labour market and economic changes in recent years have presented challenges to its operation anddiscusses its possible future development in the light of these challenges and their relevance internationally.
Voluntary management systems (MS) might improve occupational health and safety (OHS). MSs, as with any OHS management, requires worker influence (and management commitment) to reduce risks at work. Influence through union backed safety representatives (or similar) achieves the best OHS results. However, a MS guarantees neither effective OHS management nor strong worker influence. Systematic violations of legal requirements have repeatedly caused accidents at workplaces with certified MSs. Why employers introduce MS's can affect their implementation and outcomes. Internal objectives, of productivity and/or work-related health, require upstream prevention and a genuine influence by workers and their safety representatives. However, managers with external objectives for a MS, such as brand images or low reported accident figures, may pursue such objectives through downstream control of safe behaviour - sometimes suppressing accident reporting - and with little attention to more serious long-term diseases. Worker consultation may then be a limited means of enhancing safety, or to one-way communication on safety rules. Such consultation may even be used for union busting. Many trade unions welcome MSs as possible improvement instruments, but they are also wary of what MSs employers are actually trying to implement. Unions try to support their safety representatives' influence in a MS by enhancing their rights and their competences. If the motives for MSs are mainly external and the opportunities for influence too limited, it may be better for unions not to cooperate with management in a MS that may lead more to manipulation than to safe and sound work.
It examines the implications of the shift from specification to process based regulation, in which attention has been increasingly directed to the means of managing OHS more systematically at a time in which a major restructuring of work has occurred in response to the globalised economy. These changes provide both the context and material for a wider discussion of the nature of regulation and regulatory inspection and their role in protecting the health, safety and well-being of workers in advanced market economies. © David Walters, Richard Johnstone, Kaj Frick, Michael Quinlan, Geneviève Baril-Gingras and Annie Thébaud-Mony 2011.
In WHP, there is a need for an organizational approach, as has already been mandated in preventive OHS management. This approach calls for changes in organizational systems that improve an individual’s chance of becoming healthy. The aim is that health becomes an essential issue in the corporate strategy and policy as well as the management control system of the company. WHP ought to be an intrinsic and central part of the organizational system rather than something that is forced through legislation or is the subject of occasional programmes offered to the employees. Health must be considered in its broadest sense, with the realization that the essential parts of organizational workplace health are complex and broad-reaching. However, to accomplish this goal, many of the problems that hinder the recognition of health as a company resource have to be resolved. Our book aims to contribute to this resolution.