Monitoring of occupational safety and health in the European Union : report to the European Agency

This project was carried out by TNO Work & Employment in the Netherlands in close co-operation with a group of system-information suppliers across the European member states and Norway. The report contains an overall analysis of the monitoring systems, highlighting interesting elements and pointing out shortcomings in the existing schemes (including where information is lacking). In addition to the analysis, the report contains suggestions about the content of a possible OSH Monitoring system at European level. The 23 European OSH Monitoring systems that are described and reviewed in this report are not necessarily 'the best' but express in a representative way 'the variety' available in the European Union with respect to aim, use, content, and methodology of systems. The list of systems includes worker surveys, databases, registers of accidents, diseases, and/or absenteeism, policy-directed systems and intervention- and OSH-management oriented systems. Four types of data gathering are used: surveys or questionnaires (14 systems), social security registers (9 systems), workplace observations (8 systems), and use of national census data (5 systems)