Occupational Health Service in Denmark

- the Danish work environment advisory-system of multidisciplinary, preventive serviceunits

Occupational Health Service (OHS) in the Danish work environment regulation.

The Danish work environment regulation is based on principles of participation of the employees. The participation is organised in the enterprises in a safety organisation according to principles pointed out in the legislation.

The tasks of the safety organisation is designed so that its activities (of the safety organisation) does not affect the responsibility of the management:

• Control and assessment of the work environment situation in the plant.
• Advise to improvements carried out by the management decisions.

The safety organisation is build up from so called safety groups in every department of the enterprise and a central safety comity for the entire plant.

The safety group consists of the supervisor of the department and a safety representative elected by and among the employees. The two members of the group collaborate on the tasks: the practical maintenance of the work environment matters in the department - formalistic said as advice from the group to the supervisor, who then have to carry out solutions through his role as manager.

The safety comity composed from a chairman representing the employer and two representatives elected by the supervisors and two elected by the safety representatives. The task of the comity is to manage the work environment activities in the enterprise and not to make decisions on all the cases where there is a disagreement in a safety group.

The legislation states some contributions to promote a good function of the co-operation in the safety organisation:

• Rules of how to organise the safety organisation with safety groups and safety comity.
• A rank of tasks: workplace assessment according to the EEC framework directive,   participation in the planning of technology an work-organisation, analyses of hazards … and so on...
• Qualifications: the members of the safety groups are obligated to follow a 37-hour education and the work environment councils have to develop and offer optional supplemental education.
• But for the members of the safety organisation the work environment activities will always be the secondary task, so an easy access to support is necessary: safety managers, work environment councils - and the OHS.

The Danish OHS-system is changing

The danish governmenet has in summer 2004 decided to change the OHS-system.

The recent system is based on obligations for the compagnies in specified lines of trade - aprox. 40% of the labourmarket. This system will be outfased over a periode running untill January 2009. 

Compagnies with a OSH-certification have no longer OHS-obligations from January 2005 and all the other compagnies with OHS-obligations will be inspected by the Labour-inspection through the periode 2005-2008 and will be free of OHS-obligation when the become inspected. 

Through the periode 2005-2011 will all compagnies in Denmark be inspected by the Labourinspection whenever they are OHS-obligated or not.

As a result of the inspection the Labour-inspection can demand the compagny to use an OHS to solve specified types of OSH-problems. This demand can be related to advisory for a periode of one or two years to develop the internal OSH-activities in the compagny or related to spcific problems, which have to be solved.

This new OHS-system is presented and discussed in this paper [Click here] and in this power-point-show [Click here]

The organisation and function of the previous OHS-system

The Danish OHS-system is designed to be the primary support system for the safety organisation.

It is designed for prevention of work environment problems and health promotion through technical, ergonomic, medical and psychological support to the safety organisation. It is not designed for individual health treatment of the employees.

That is why OHS is based on these principles:

• All enterprises in specific industrial lines has to participate in OHS.
• An OHS-unit is financed and property of the affiliated enterprises by annual fees, and their membership includes a right to some OHS consultant services without extra fee.
• An OHS-unit is managed by a board consisting of an equal number of employers representatives and employees representatives.
• The enterprises have the freedom to plan how to use their OHS - in a dialog with the OHS-unit. There is only very few rules in the legislation that obligates specific OHS-consultant activities such as health examinations, exposure control.
• The authorities keeps control with the quality of the OHS-units and their consultant services.

The OHS consultant services has to be:

• Holistic and multidisciplinary.
• Have a high level of prevention - according to the appendix to the EEC framework directive.
• Have to support the safety organisation and development of the enterprises internal work environment capacity .

In the legislation it is stated, that the safety organisation have to participate in the cooperation between the enterprise and its OHS.

Several areas of co-operation is pointed out as areas in which it´s compulsorry involve the safety organisation:

• Choice of OHS-form (in-plant OHS, local OHS-centre or line of trade OHS).
• Election of representatives for the employees in the OHS-board  
• It is obligatory to involve the safety organisation in the debate of the basic agreement between the enterprise and the OHS (how the co-operation between the enterprise and the OHS shall be practically organised).
• Design of the specific OHS-consultant jobs and evaluation of them afterwards (Did the work enviroment improve and did the enterprise learn to handle its work environment problems?).
• Continuous dialog and information between the safety organisation and the OHS.

If the OHS-personnel spot an acute - but not realised - danger in the plant, they have inform the safety organisation, the exposed employee and the enterprise (the relevant supervisor).

The Danish OHS is an element of the work environment regulation system and not in the national health care system.

The Danish work environment regulation system is described on the Danish labourinspection-website [Click here] or at the Danish EU-topic center web-site [Click here]

The Association of Preventive and Health Services in Denmark
(Arbejdsmiljørådgiverne)

Sundkrogskaj 20, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark
Telefon +45 363 00 520  
E-mail: info@bamr.dk

The Association is the co-operation body of the occupational prevention and health-service units in Denmark.
The Association is co-operating with the Danish legal authorities, the labour market organisations and the work environmental research- and education institutions in Denmark as well as in the Nordic countries and Europe.

The Associations main tasks is:

• To meditate the dialog between the OHS-system and other parts of the Danish work environment system: the legal authorities (e. g. labour inspection) and councils driven by the social partners.
• To develop and maintain the education of the OHS-consultants.
• To define the frame of the development and improvement of the methods of OHS-activities.
• To organize any other activity of common interests for all the OHS-units e. g. IT-systems, databases a. o.

The Association is member of ENSHPO - The European Network of Safety and Health Practitioner Organisations [Click here]

Danish OHS-units: [Click here]