World Risk Poll highlights scale of the ongoing occupational safety challenge

The findings of the latest World Risk Poll report make sobering reading for all those working to encourage better occupational health and safety (OHS) performance, as they highlight the scale of the ongoing challenge. 

The ‘Engineering Safer Workplaces’ report highlights the extent of harm at work being experienced across the globe, and while the figures vary quite significantly by region, there is none for which the current figures would justify complacency. 

This is especially true if we take into account that the use of the term “harm” does not automatically prompt the respondent to consider psychological harm. In more developed economies, and particularly since the global Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a widespread recognition by workers that work-related hazards may cause psychological harm as well as physical. However, it remains likely that in some other parts of the world, Poll respondents gave answers that accounted only for physical harm, meaning that there may be a degree of under-reporting in the data.

Protecting vulnerable workers

Additionally, the World Risk Poll reminds us of the additional vulnerabilities of younger workers, workers in lower-income countries, the self-employed and those in part-time employment, as well as those with lower education levels and with lower financial resilience.

It is concerning to be reminded that OHS risks are greater for the self-employed, and those in informal employment and the “gig economy”. Employment trends suggest that these categories will account for an increasingly large proportion of the global workforce, with fewer workers employed by the large or medium-sized corporations which typically have greater expertise and resources with which to manage OHS effectively. 

But perhaps the most startling finding from the Poll’s new workplace safety data is that the majority of the global workforce has never received occupational safety and health training, with up to 80% of workers in some high-risk sectors, and almost 90% in certain countries, being untrained. Little wonder, then, that workers’ reporting of the harm they experience occurs in little over 50% of cases.

The World Risk Poll data poses a challenge for safety regulators, standards writers and others seeking to encourage and support better OHS performance. As all such organisations will attest, influencing the OHS performance of small organisations, the self-employed and workers in the informal economy is far more difficult than influencing the OHS performance of large and medium-sized corporations. It is a challenge that few, if any, can claim to have solved. As members of ISO Technical Committee 283 heard during our last face-to-face meeting in Kigali, Rwanda, small-scale innovative approaches have brought some success. But these examples are little-known, and there remains much scope for collaboration and sharing of experience between the many organizations across the OHS space that are wrestling with this challenge.

Challenges for employers

The Poll data also poses a challenge for larger organisations whose supply chains include the workers in smaller organisations, the self-employed, and workers in the gig economy, especially in those parts of the world where safety performance is weakest. If these organisations are not to be seen as simply exporting risk that they would not impose on their own workforce onto more vulnerable workers in their supply chain, they need to actively consider the OHS capabilities of their supply chain partners and proactively use their economic influence to help drive improvement. 

The World Risk Poll results also raise questions about how best to encourage smaller organisations, the self-employed, and workers in the gig economy to address OHS, when the evidence suggests that attention to OHS is often crowded out by their many other competing demands. One might wonder whether much of the current messaging and guidance is too complex and too demanding, meaning that it is often put aside for another day?  Would a simpler message, for example focussing purely on the importance of safety training, be more effective in encouraging some to move from inertia to action?

From the perspective of ISO Technical Committee 283, there is much upon which to reflect in this data, as we review our efforts to influence global OHS performance, to better engage with and address the needs of small and micro organisations, and to extend participation in our work beyond our current membership of 77 participating and 23 observer countries – not least by including more of the countries in which the new World Risk Poll report suggests workers are facing the greatest OHS challenges.