by Shane Henson — September 21, 2011—Employees working within European small businesses may soon experience a safer environment through an innovative, free, Online interactive Risk Assessment (OiRA) project that was developed by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA). The tool will help Europe’s 20 million micro and small enterprises to improve safety and health for their workers by assessing risks through an easy-to-use and cost-free Web application.
“Experience shows that proper risk assessment is the key to healthy workplaces,” explains Dr. Jukka Takala, director of EU-OSHA. “Yet carrying out risk assessments can be quite challenging, particularly for small enterprises as they lack adequate resources or the know-how to do so effectively. The reasons companies give for not carrying out checks are lack of expertise (41%), or the belief that risk assessments are too expensive or that they are overly time consuming (38%),” says Takala.
The vision of EU-OSHA’s landmark project is to assist small enterprises in putting in place a step-by-step risk assessment process—starting with the identification and evaluation of workplace risks, through to the decision making on preventive action, identification of adequate measures, to continued monitoring and reporting. The aim is to reduce the burden for small enterprises of carrying out and documenting their risk assessments easily and quickly while maintaining accuracy.
The collaboration with key social partners also encourages widespread take-up and use of the tool at enterprise level and leads to the development of an OiRA community to share knowledge and experience. The final tool is backed by support and full guidance services provided by EU-OSHA to the developers.
