Safety and health good practice award winners honoured by European Agency on the eve of World Day for Safety and Health at Work

Eight organisations and companies were honoured with an award at the ninth annual European Good Practice competition organised by the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA). The awards form part of the Healthy Workplaces campaign on risk assessment. The award winners and commended entries all promoted good safety and health practices in workplace risk assessment. A new booklet published today showcases the good practice initiatives they have implemented.

Hundreds of organisations and companies from all over Europe entered the competition. The winners received their prizes during the Safety and Health at Work in Europe in the 21st Century congress, organised just one day before the World Day for Safety and Health at Work (28 April) by the Czech Presidency of the European Union in Prague.

Vladimír Špidla, EU Commissioner for Employment, Social Affairs and Equal Opportunities, said: “These companies and organisations have really made an outstanding contribution to promoting risk assessment and, thus, to reducing accidents and promoting good health in the workplace. These good practices are in line with our Community Strategy for Safety and Health at Work (2007–2012) which, as well as targeting occupational ill health, also aims at cutting work-related accidents by a quarter across the EU.”

Petr Nečas, Czech Minister of Labour and Social Affairs highlighted the positive economic impact of risk assessment. “The winners and commended examples show clearly that proper risk assessment also brings a number of business benefits: Making workplaces safer and healthier helps to reduce absenteeism and insurance costs, and increases worker motivation and productivity.”

Jukka Takala, Director of EU-OSHA, welcomed the high quality of the entries. “Several hundred good practices examples were submitted to our network of focal points throughout Europe. Some 50 were taken forward to European level, and these 17 organisations are really the best of the best. All of them underline the key messages of the Healthy Workplaces campaign: These examples show that risk assessment is not necessarily complicated, bureaucratic or a task only for experts.”