Healthy workplaces – lighten the load

The EU-OSHA Healthy Workplaces Campaign 2020-2022

A good approach to safety and health at work is good for everyone: workers, companies and society as a whole. Such an approach requires a good culture of prevention. Specifically, employers and management personnel must commit to preventing health risks and actively promoting good employee health.

Ideally, an active, participative approach to occupational safety and health would make all companies more competitive – for example by reducing the number of working days lost due to illness, increasing productivity and making work more sustainable.

The 2020-2022 campaign by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU OSHA), with the slogan “Healthy workplaces – lighten the load”, aims to raise awareness for work-related musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) and the importance of preventing them. The goal is to encourage employers, employees and other stakeholders to work together in preventing MSDs.

The campaign also aims to demonstrate that work-related MSDs affect all economic sectors and activities and that they can be tackled and prevented. This is to be attained through the following strategic objectives:

1. Raising of awareness for the prevention of work-related MSDs by the provision of data, facts and figures on their impact
2. Supporting risk assessment and active implementation of measures for preventing MSDs by the provision of tools, guidance and audio-visual materials
3. Demonstrating the relevance of MSDs for everyone – irrespective of the type of work they perform, and in what sector – and how MSDs can successfully be reduced, for example by the provision of examples of good-practice solutions
4. Improving knowledge concerning emerging and growing hazards associated with work-related MSDs
5. Highlighting the importance of reintegrating workers with chronic MSDs into the workforce and assuring their continued employment, and identifying means for achieving this
6. Promoting better cooperation between different players through the exchange of information and good-practice solutions

In order to provide practical support to employers, EU-OSHA maintains a database of resources and case studies on MSDs. It is setting the course for the future by producing a campaign pack for schools containing a wealth of useful resources, in collaboration with the European Network Educational Training in Occupational Safety and Health (ENETOSH) and the education sector.

EU-OSHA will work closely with this network and its partners to promote the exchange of experience and good practice concerning MSDs and to ensure that the campaign messages reach employees and employers, particularly in small and microenterprises. It will also organise relevant activities and events throughout the campaign, such as the Good Practice Competition of the Healthy Workplaces Campaign.

The campaign will culminate in the Healthy Workplaces Summit, to be held in November 2022. This represents an opportunity for all those involved in the campaign to honour successes and evaluate the lessons learned.

EU-OSHA
Campaign and press team
partners@healthy-workplaces.eu

Campaign competition

Is your organization already making innovative contributions to safety and health at work? If so, enter the competition for good practice for preventing musculoskeletal disorders.
All contributions will first be evaluated by the EU-OSHA national focal points. The shortlisted examples will then be entered in the pan-European competition.

For more detailed information, please visit https://healthy-workplaces.eu/de/get-involved/good-practice-awards
or contact your national focal point.