New OHS-system in Denmark from 2005

The previous occupational health service system:

The previous system is building on obligations for all companies in general selected lines of trade. The selected lines of trade are mostly industry, construction, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, social service for handicapped persons but not e.g. other kinds of social service, schools, cleaning, transportation. The selected lines of trade are covering approx. 40% of the total Labour-market.

The obligation is generally quantified so that all companies in the selected lines of trade have to be affiliated to a preventive service so that they have a disposal at 0,6 hours of advisory per employee per year. All the bigger companies must then together with the preventive service make a plan for the use of these resources of advisory - the smaller every other year.

The preventive services are certificated and controlled by a governmental control-institution - The Danish Accreditation Authority. The preventive services are controlled to ensure that they have a dynamic quality-management system where experiences from the advisory in the companies are involved in the quality-development. The quality-values are focused on that the advisory must be preventive, holistic and supporting the internal capacity of safety and health prevention in the companies.

The quality-management system must also ensure that the consultants in the preventive service is continuously well educated and the new-employed consultants are following an introduction plan involving 26 days of external training in the first 3 years with an introduction to the work with safety and health, to the national safety and health co-operation system and to the Labour-market organizations and governmental institutions.

The workers-participation is ensured at two levels:
1. The workers in the affiliated companies are represented in the managerial board of the preventive services so that management-representatives and the workers representatives cover half of the board members each part. These two parts have to agree in questions as designing the management of the preventive service and the fee for affiliation.
2. The workers have to be involved in designing and evaluating the entire advisory tasks so that they can support the development of solutions and so that the solutions are acceptable for the workers as well as for the management.

The new occupational health service system:

Companies with a certification of their health and safety management systems will have no obligations to affiliate a preventive service from 2005 and will meet no control from the Labour-inspection.

The Labour-inspection will through the next 11 years make a so called “screening” of all Danish companies without such a certification – a kind of non-formal inspection. The companies will be free of obligations to affiliate a preventive service when they have been screened. The companies that not immediate seems to have an internal preventive activity and a working environment according to the rules in the safety and health act will become object of a formal and more detailed inspection.

If this detailed inspection will state that the company do not observe one or more of some specified rules in the act it will be ordered to use external environment advisory about a the specific problem or about development of the internal preventive activities in the company. These orders of advisory will not contain any kinds of quantification, so it is up to a negotiation between the company and the advisory provider to make a contract, because the amount of the external advisory must reflect the internal capacity for safety and health management. However the advisory must be a “process” if the task is to develop the internal preventive activities. 

At the end of the advisory-process the advisory-provider has to attest that the problem is solved and the situation in the company is according to rules of the act. The new system seems to change the advisory of the preventive service system to a kind of non-governmental control-system.

The companies whom the Labour-inspection gives an obligation for working environment advisory may buy the advisory at advisory provider with a special authorization so that they can be in charge to attest when the problems are solved.
It is the Labour-inspection who gives the authorizations after an evaluation of the education and experiences of key-consultants on each of 5 topic-areas of the working environment employed by the advisory-provider, but without the specified demands on education of new-employed consultants and quality-development from the previous system. Most of the preventive services certificated to the previous system have due to an easy special-procedure already been authorized, but the new authorization-system will be open also for other advisory providers
The existing rule about a strong workers participation in the management of the preventive services is already repealed – also for occupational health services under the former certification-system.

Two sorts of preventive service:

Prevention is reduced to be a question about fulfilling some specific rules in the safety and health act and not continuously to supervise the company to manage the working environment tasks through planning the technology and working organization, employees training and instruction, management systems and so on.
This kind of advisory will become optional for the companies and the preventive services will become providers of these kinds of services on a free market in competition with other advisory providers without any authorization.

The big question is if it will be possible to combine these two sorts of advisory, so that companies ordered to buy advisory for problem-solving can be motivated to continue to develop their internal preventive and to realize when they have need for using external preventive service. In Denmark there is not much tradition for optional use of preventive services because the need of the companies for prevention is small because it is very easy to fire employees even if they are injured by occupational diseases or accidents and they have no obligations to evolve themselves in e. g. revalidation-plans for the injured person it he is no longer employed in the company.

The political background for these changes:

The previous system was un-equal to the different lines of trade: some had obligation to affiliate a preventive service - other lines of trade with equal levels of safety and health problems had no obligation.
It seemed unfair that all companies in the lines of trade with obligation had the same quantitative obligation - whatever they have complicated problems or no severe problems.

The new liberal government wants in general to make companies who observe the rules of the act free of governmental demands. Opposite this strategy the previous system gave the safety-committee power to enforce a development of the level of the working environment also in excess of the limit values in the rules of the safety and health act and it was as so a source of economical and political insecurity for the employers.

Reflexive or normative regulation:

With this changes Denmark is leaving the traditional Nordic principles of reflexive regulation and is moving towards regulation based on measurable rules and control in order to meet the political aim to give the companies an easy relation to governmental obligations in general. 

This is a strategy that implies that an exact regulation of all kinds of safety and health problems is possible - but how will it possible to define limit values for bullying, accidents, multiple exposures and so on? In the Nordic countries it was a mutual recognition that this is not possible already in the 1970’es.

The traditional Nordic reflexive tradition was a consequence of the complex and holistic nature of the working environment: Focus more at the company-internal activities and the support of theses internal control and preventions systems - more than exact regulation of every single detail of the working environment.

The new Danish advisory system is a tool for the employer to solve the out pointed problems to observe the rules in the act and not a tool for continuous development of the internal preventive activities or the workers participation in co-operation with the employer: It will be the Labour-inspection who point out witch problems the advisory-provider has to help the company to solve - not the internal dialog between the parties in the company.

The new system will move the responsibility for the preventive development of the working environment from the companies to the governmental authorities and the legal rules.

Our concerns:

• How will the working environment develop in the companies who are not so engaged in safety and health that the optional will have internal qualifications or will use external advisory service for prevention but anyway are not so bad that they will be ordered by the Labour-inspection to use external advisory?
• How will it be possible to keep a high level of quality and impartiality in the preventive services when the governmental control is reduced and the market will define the how much quality, the companies being ordered to use advisory are willing to pay for?

A result of the new system will probably be that the number of employees with access to preventive services will decrease from approx. 50% to maybe only 30% in Denmark within few years.

New possibilities for good and preventive advisory:

The ordered advisory will no longer be limited of the general quantification of 0,6 hours advisory per employee per year, so e. g. the small-size companies with safety and health problems will be enforced to use much more advisory than in the previous system.

The optional advisory will be developed so that it will fit better to the needs of individual company and there will be a better combination of safety and health, health-promotion, fire-protection, external environment, inclusive workplaces and so on.

Anders Kabel

April, 2005