Occupational health and safety prevention

Occupational health and safety prevention programmes - assessing experiences in the Netherlands
 
Thursday 22 October, time: 11.15-12.45, location: C-13.

Organizers:
Albert Hollander, MsC, PhD., Senior researcher, TNO Quality of Life, Hoofddorp, The Netherlands, albert.hollander@tno.nl

Jan Michiel Meeuwsen, MA, Senior consultant and Manager international affairs, TNO Quality of Life, Hoofddorp, The Netherlands, jan_michiel.meeuwsen@tno.nl

In the Netherlands various occupational health and safety prevention programmes were performed. In general these programmes were aiming at three levels, the national, sector and company level. However, these programmes can only be called a success if tangible results can been seen on company level, i.e. at the shop floor. Therefore, activities at the national and sector level were used to bring the companies, especially SMEs, into action. Various blockades and opportunities were met during the performance of these activities. Finally, the important question is: have these programmes resulted in a significantly improvement of the working conditions in SMEs?

During the roundtable discussion will present examples of the programmes and elaborate on the blockades and opportunities which were met in our studies. After a short discussion, we will reflect these results on the experiences of the participants. The result of this roundtable discussion is a SWOT-analyses of national programmes on convincing entrepreneurs of the added value of preventive health and safety measures in the various EU member states.

See PowerPoint presentation