Safety for young employees at work - Budapest Conference
Jill Joyce, Senior Policy and Technical Adviser from IOSH
moderated a session at the 3rd Injury Prevention
Conference in Budapest in June 2011.
The safety of young employees at work is an important issue as
over half a million young workers were injured in the EU in
2007. Latest statistics available from Eurostat indicate that although the
occurrence of accidents decreased between 1999 and 2007 for workers
aged 25 to 64, the occurrence of accidents increased in young
workers aged 15 to 24.
Accidents at work occur more often in men,
younger workers, and in those with a low educational level and
occur more frequently in the construction, manufacturing and
agriculture sectors. Young workers are more vulnerable in the work
place because of their inexperience and physical and psychological
immaturity. They are susceptible to peer pressure and
often have an unrealistic perception of risk. They are
keen to please and therefore are less likely to question work
procedures.
Jill Joyce at the Budapest
Conference
This means that safety training and
supervision are vital for young workers. Attitudes and
commitment to safety are shaped during the first few months in
employment, making this an important time to reinforce positive
safety attitudes and combat any poor health habits which might lead
to problems in later life.
In this session, Sarah Copsey (European
Agency for Health and Safety at Work) outlined success factors in
preventing risks to young workers, looking at evidence from four
initiatives in European workplaces. These involved:
- older apprentices sharing experiences of accidents
and incidents with younger apprentices to inform risk
assessment
- students proposing practical solutions to real
life problems at an agricultural college,
- a partnership between a temporary work agency, a
company and a large insurance company resulting in a joint safety
charter and young workers developing an interactive training
tool.
- a ‘whole school’ approach to safety.
Dr. Linda Miller (Institute for Employment Studies
)discussed how training, organisational factors and individual
differences can influence risks to young workers. She
reported research assessing the longer term impact of the ‘safe
learner’ blueprint for apprentices. Other aspects apart from
the quality of health and safety training were found to influence
health and safety at work, including the workplace safety culture,
the quality of supervision and individual differences such as
conscientiousness of the learner. Learners are more
likely to apply information they see as relevant, so the more
occupation/sector specific information is, the better. There
is evidence that supervisors have a direct impact on worker safety,
which has implications for supervisor training.
Susanne Ulk (Consultant to Danish Teacher Trade
Unions) described how safety and health awareness has been raised
in Denmark. Teaching health and safety is a high priority and
is mandatory for all school grades. Students are encouraged to make
a positive contribution to their own health and safety. She
described a web portal targeted at young workers but also
containing information for parents, employers and schools.
The young person section contains five thematic dilemma games to
help them understand risk. This illustrated the need for
inspiring, excellent and affordable teaching materials.
Participants at the workshop then discussed
the points from the presentations, comparing what happens in their
own countries and whether there was potential to use the good
practice examples outlined. Possible policies were then
discussed to increase the political profile of the injury issue and
stakeholders identified that needed to contribute to this
process.
A full report and details of presentations
will be available at 3rd
European Conference on Injury Prevention and Safety
Promotion.
For further information please contact Jill Joyce