Findings and views on occupational safety and health teaching at universities

Digital platforms: Perceived criteria of success, importance of work design, occupational safety and health for present and prospective digital platforms

BACKGROUND:

Digital platforms have found their way into all our lives: they are discussed in political, economic, scientific and public fields worldwide. Platform-based work is also on the rise in the German labour market, not only in institutionalised work, but also in start-ups and spin-offs.

OBJECTIVES:

The article describes the results of an analysis aimed at identifying perceptions of new and already known major success factors on market entry and market penetration regarding occupational safety and health (OSH) and work design.

METHODS:

A total of 31 semi-standardised interviews were conducted with 39 people. First, perceived success factors in general were examined with the comparative analysis. Surprisingly, OSH/work design factors did not emerge as perceived success factors. For this reason, a in-depth analysis was performed in a secondary analysis with the structured content analysis.

RESULTS:

Identified perceived success factors were user orientation, scalability, network effects, niche occupation. The in-depth secondary analysis with focus on OSH/work design showed that the interviewees are aware of the topic of OSH/work design, but did not consider it to be important to economic success.

CONCLUSIONS:

The identified success factors may not seem surprising. What is surprising, however, is the role played by OSH/work design. Solutions must be developed that sensitize working persons in the platform sector to the topic of OSH/work design. A two-step process may be useful: First, uniform regulations and laws must be anchored in the platform architecture. Second, various measures and training courses can be designed to inform and raise awareness.

Expert perspective on health and safety determinants in wineries

BACKGROUND: The scientific literature contextualizes health and safety (H&S) in two major models, the first is based on a holistic perspective with H&S processes in all company departments, and the second approaches health and safety management from a more operational perspective. In this study, we examine the issue of health and safety in wineries. In 2017, a census showed that wineries account for 14% of the food and beverage industry in Spain. They provide direct employment for 24,051 people and involve complex winemaking processes that can cause accidents or occupational diseases. Wineries are part of the industrial sector, which, with 5,264 lost-time accidents per 100,000 workers in 2017, ranks second in the number of occupational accidents in Spain. This shows the need to determine the changes needed to improve health and safety in wineries. METHODS: In this study, we identify H&S determinants in wineries using Delphi methodology with a panel of 11 experts. CONCLUSION: The experts gave high scores to the “activities” dimension, and others such as “control of personal and collective protective equipment” and “training”, together with “accident investigation“, “coordinated health and safety measures” and “signage” are associated with operational health and safety determinants, namely, capitalizing on knowledge gained in situ and promoting organizational learning.