Safe Small and Micro Enterprises – What works and why it works… Outcome from the State-of-Play research of the SESAME project

This presentation will provide an introduction to two workshops of the USE-conference 2015 on occupational health and safety strategies and practices in micro and small enterprises in Europe. The presentation will synthesise the main outcome of Work Package 1 ‘State-of-play’ of the SESAME project – Safe Small and Micro Enterprises. This project is being carried out for the European Agency for Safety and Health at the Workplace (EU-OSHA). The project runs from 2014 to 2017 and brings together expert research teams from nine EU Member States that are each representative of different types of occupational safety and health ‘regimes’ (policies, regulations and practices) and their socio-economic and regulatory contexts. The main aim of SESAME is to collect, analyse and disseminate new and comprehensive knowledge and understanding on: policies and strategies; tools and resources; and workplace views and practices with regards to OSH in micro and small enterprises. In the first work package, that will be finalised in October 2015, five SESAME partners conduct an in-depth review of available data relevant to OSH in micro and small enterprises (MSE) in the EU. The review includes facts and figures enabling the construction of an EU profile on OSH outcomes in these enterprises. It identifies knowledge to date on the main external and internal determinants of arrangements for OSH in micro and small enterprises in order to identify the major variables that impact on their arrangements for OSH. WP1 also provides an account of the range of strategies and resources available to support improvement in these outcomes and arrangements, and a critical analysis of their effectiveness. The methods used are: literature reviews, data analysis (different data sources) and realist evaluation.status: publishe