
Safe and Healthy Workplaces
Initial findings about new risks in the workplace.
SK – 02/2025
At the beginning of February, the European
Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) published the initial results
from the European Survey of Enterprises on New and Emerging Risks (ESENER
2024). Over 41,000 companies in 30 European countries – which included EU
member states, Iceland, Norway and Switzerland – were involved and they shared
information about how health and safety risks are managed in the workplace.
Key topics included general health and
safety risks in the workplace, psychosocial risks, drivers and barriers that
arise when managing occupational health and safety as well as employee
participation in implementing health and safety measures.
ESENER has been conducted every five years
since 2009. The detailed results from ESENER 2024 will be published gradually
until 2026.
Risk factors show little change
The ranking of the considered risk factors
was led by prolonged sitting (64 per cent, as compared to 61 per cent in 2019)
and repetitive arm and hand movements (63 per cent, as compared to 65 per cent
in 2019), which are considered to be triggers for musculoskeletal disorders.
They were closely followed by psychosocial risks (52 per cent, as compared to
58 per cent in 2019). Employees, especially those in the service sector, are
having to deal with difficult customers, patients or pupils and are under greater
mental stress.
Only minimal changes were seen when the
three leading risk factors from ESENER 2024 were compared against those from
the 2014 survey. Whereas prolonged sitting was only included as a risk factor
in 2019 due to the digitisation of the working world, ESENER had already
collected data about tiring and painful positions, including sitting for long
periods (56 per cent), but this data is only comparable to a limited extent.
Conversely, psychosocial risks (56 per cent) topped the list of risk factors in
2014.
Digitisation remains an issue
Data has also been collected regarding the
impact of digitisation on the health and safety of employees since the ESENER
survey in 2019. As was the case five years ago, many companies stated in the
current survey that they use a variety of digital technologies in the
workplace. Whilst various mobile devices such as laptops, smartphones and
tablets have already become the norm in companies, only around seven per cent
of the companies surveyed work with computers, machines or systems that use
artificial intelligence.
Given the widespread use of digital
technologies, the dialogue between employers and employees about the possible
effects of their use has developed positively. In 2019, only 24 per cent of
companies stated that they consulted their employees about the health and
safety implications involved when using digital technologies; yet by 2024, this
figure had risen to 35 per cent of the companies surveyed.
Slight decline in the involvement in prevention
A different picture emerges when it comes
to involving employees in preventing psychosocial risks. In companies that had
set priorities for preventing psychosocial risks at least three years before
the ESENER 2024 survey, more than half of the companies (55 per cent) stated
that their employees were involved in organising these measures. This
proportion continued to fall slightly when compared to the 2019 (61 per cent)
and 2014 (63 per cent) surveys.