Hans Jørgen Limborg

The working environment in small firms: Responses from owner-managers

Limited research has been conducted on owner-managers’ responses to the working environment (occupational health and safety). This should be understood in the light of the way owner-managers develop identity from their business, and a better understanding is needed to develop preventive programmes that fit the owner-managers’ interpretation of the working environment. Qualitative interviews were carried out with the owner-managers or the managers responsible for the working environment in 23 small firms from the construction and metal industries. The interviews were analysed for attitudes on the working environment, understanding of risk, responsibility for the working environment, and attitudes towards regulation. The analysis revealed both a great heterogeneity of views on the working environment and groups of owners who share important characteristics. Most owner-managers take a positive approach to the working environment, but also try to ‘talk risk down’, criticize regulation as bureaucracy and push a part of the employer responsibility on to the employees. They try to follow what they experience as a generally acceptable standard for the working environment among the stakeholders in the sector, but some owner-managers also tend to neglect the working environment. The reason for the down grading of risk and the push to share responsibility can be found in the close social relationships and the identity work processes of the owner-managers with their business. They try to act as decent people and thus avoid personal guilt and blame if employees should get injured.

Qualifying the consultative skills of the occupational health service staff

Abstract Different professional strategies within the Danish Occupational Health Service (OHS) have emerged during the last two decades, all aiming to comply with the prevention objective of the OHS. This development can be described by four successive approaches to professional occupational health and safety work: the medical approach, the technical prevention approach, the change agent approach, and the management strategy approach. For each of these approaches related training strategies have been developed. Experience shows that education and training within the traditional disciplines of OHS work have to be supplemented with a range of other qualifications that improves the consultative skills of the OHS professionals. Since these qualifications are relevant to all fields of specialization, multidisciplinary education and training proves to be part of OHS training programmes. A basic training programme of five weeks that aims to focus upon relevant multidisciplinary topics within all four approaches is offered to the Danish OHS personnel.

Occupational health services in Denmark – the rise and fall of a multidisciplinary and preventive approach

Introduction The story of Danish OH services is one of the development of a unique system – quite different from the ones found in many other countries. The almost exclusive emphasis has been on preventive activities in the workplace, while more traditional medical services have been excluded. The system took off in the late 1970s, with nearly unanimous support from both the major blocs in the Danish parliament, and from employers and unions. For 25 years, the system’s actors fought to develop services, quality and professionalism. However, at the same time, the system became entangled in a damaging political process, which started with conflicts between the social partners about compulsory affiliation and payment for administrative staff in industrial companies 12 years ago.

Juvenile Workers or Pocketmoney Precariat? – The Process and Effect of Establishing Health and Safety Committees for Juvenile Workers in Danish Retail Sector

In the Danish retail industry, young workers employed in temporary positions for few hours a week constitutes more than half of the employees. For the main part of the young workers this employment is their first meeting with the labor market, they lack knowledge and awareness of the work environment, and at some workplaces the introduction is limited, ‘ad-hoc’ or ‘fast-track’ [1]. Often the young worker feel only limited involved in decisions regarding their work [2]. It may be beneficial both for short- and long-term performance and security to increase the young workers knowledge of and involvement in the work environment issues, as well as the employer’s awareness on the needs of the young workers.

Research Note: Networking among small and medium-sized enterprises: Meeting the challenge of promoting safety and health measures

Abstract Researchers and regulatory bodies lack an in-depth understanding of how small and mediumsized enterprises (SMEs) make decisions about workplace health and safety improvements and the role played by business networks in these decisions. To improve regulation and support there is a need to understand SMEs better and, to create the means to empower them to work systematically with occupational health and safety. The present study suggests that networks of SMEs might be a suitable target for interventions. Realistic evaluation and social capital theory based on data obtained via qualitative interviews, document analysis and observations were used to analyse two networks of small enterprises (in dairy and brewery) in Denmark that launched similar occupational health projects but had different outcomes. Whilst both Dairy (D) and Brewery (B) networks had active external funding, the following differences between external and internal mechanisms driving SME workplace safety decisions within each network were found: External - pressures from labour inspectors (D - active, B - limited), professional support (D - active, B - partly); Internal - horizontal relations/shared identity (D - very active, B - limited), mutual trust (D - active, B - limited), workers involved in ‘button up’ process (D - to some extent, B - nonexistent), exclusion criteria (D - agreed, B - none), pact on openness (D - agreed, B - not defined), shared commitment to new standards (D - limited, B - non-existent). It is concluded that both external pressures and internal motivations must be present to drive SMEs within a network to improve health and safety conditions.