European Risk Assessment campaign closes
December 1st 2009 “With over 450 Europeans dying every day from work-related causes, workplace health and safety cannot be regarded as a luxury in these times of economic crisis”. That was the message of Jukka Takala, director of the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA), at the close of its campaign on risk assessments.
The Healthy Workplaces Campaign, aimed to raise awareness of risk assessment as the cornerstone of good health and safety management.
EU-OSHA also used the event to announce preliminary results of the European Survey of Enterprises on New and Emerging Risks (ESENER), looking particularly at the numbers of organisations of various sizes which carry out risk assessments. The survey shows that despite the legal obligation to carry out regular risk assessments, between 10 and 15% of enterprises with between 10 and 50 employees still do not carry out a risk assessment, or even a more informal ‘workplace check’. The survey also highlights that the smaller the establishments are, the more likely they are to outsource a risk assessment to a service provider.
The legacy of the EU-OSHA campaign will be an online risk assessment tool for SMEs to be made available at the end of 2010.
The 2010/2011 campaign will focus on maintenance. More articles from European Agency For Safety & Health At Work (EU-OSHA): | 
