Three questions for: Eckhard Metze, Head of the employers’ liaison office at the KAN Secretariat until March 2025

As Head of the employers’ liaison office at the KAN Secretariat, Eckhard Metze represented the interests of employers on numerous standards and occupational safety and health committees for over 25 years, until his retirement at the end of March 2025.

You were a member of the DIN Standards Committee for Organizational Processes from its inception in 2013, and its Chairman from 2019 onwards. Why is this topic important to you?

When I became Head of the employers’ liaison office at the KAN Secretariat, I focused on the subject of management standardization. The emphasis lay on occupational safety and health management systems and the transition from BSI OHSAS 18001 to EN ISO 45001, the first international standard in this area. I was also interested in the development of ISO 26000 on social responsibility.

Looking at the situation now, I’d prefer not to have so many standards in this area. If we’re calling for bureaucracy to be reduced and red tape to be pruned back, we can’t possibly at the same time consider it desirable to replace the rules concerned with standards whose application may well be voluntary in principle, but becomes mandatory through certification or as a requirement for contractual agreements. The Organizational Processes Standards Committee at DIN should be working against this trend.

What standardization topics do you consider particularly critical or important?

I find it questionable that standardization is increasingly encroaching into areas that have nothing to do with traditional technical standardization. Examples of this are subjects such as compliance, the combating of corruption, human resource management, sustainability of organizations, and also requirements concerning services and qualifications. It’s becoming increasingly important for KAN to ensure that issues falling within the regulatory competence of the parties to collective bargaining are excluded from the scope of standardization. Topics such as remuneration or social aspects of occupational safety and health generally are out of place here.

The Standardisation working party of the European Commission’s Advisory Committee on Health and Safety at Work is important in this context. This working party was founded in 2011 in response to an initiative by parties including the employers’ liaison office at the KAN Secretariat. A special tripartite committee consequently exists at European level in which the state, employees and employers discuss issues of standardization policy. For example, the working party has discussed the addressing in standards of issues which under Article 153 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union fall within the remit of the individual Member States or parties to collective bargaining.

The standardization of ergonomics has always been a particular concern of mine. Standards in this area communicate the principles of ergonomics and fundamental information on it to companies, and constitute a body of rules for work and product design that is accepted by all stakeholders. In the steering committee of the DIN Standards Committee Ergonomics, we’ve developed a modern concept for standardization in ergonomics. This concept has also had a decisive influence on the international and European standards committees ISO/TC 159 and CEN/TC 122. Ergonomics standardization serves as an important bridge between research activity and the field. As such, it also addresses the future issues of work design, and seeks solutions for current and future challenges. These include dealing with work-related mental stress, work design appropriate for an ageing workforce, and the shaping of the digital transformation and artificial intelligence.

In your view, what are the challenges currently facing standardization work?

I consider a particular challenge to be recruitment in future of sufficient numbers of staff for standardization activity who will help to represent German interests, not least in international standardization work. Sadly, international standardization activity is increasingly being driven by countries that no longer see standardization merely as a means of imparting knowledge, but primarily as a means of asserting national economic and trade interests. This must be opposed at all levels.

I think that the digitalization of standardization processes presents considerable opportunities. This can save time and resources in many areas. However, it’s not a substitute for face-to-face meetings. The iron principle remains that standardization will succeed only if it’s based on consensus. This, though, also requires as many societal groups as possible to participate in standardization activity, including representatives of the social partners, and also the research community, the public sector and civil society.