O-251 Developing Indicators to Assess the State and Trends of Osh at National Level

Abstract Introduction In policy making, indicators are important for monitoring the status, identifying trends and measuring progress against policy objectives and goals. Methods A number of OSH performance indicators are needed, to measure and assess the state and development in the main areas of OSH: • occupational hazards and work-related ill-health • prevention in companies, e.g., safety of technologies, internal OSH organisation including indicators for participation and cost-benefit • the performance of the public OSH infrastructure, e.g. collaboration between institutions, quality of enforcement, cost-benefit • the performance of the private OSH infrastructure, e.g. OSH associations, prevention services, etc. Results In the proposed methodology, several different sets of indicators are proposed for those areas. These include OSH status-oriented and progress-oriented, benchmarking performance of the OSH system. In this context, thee different sets are defined: ‘Input indicators’ (e.g. resources, legislation status, enforcement), ‘Process indicators’ (e.g. inspections, actions, campaigns), ‘Output indicators’ closely connected to the results of process-related activities (e.g. participants at health promotion meetings, number of trained workers, etc.) and ‘Outcome indicators, (e.g. accident rates, health effects). Discussion These could be based either on quantitative or qualitative data currently included in EU-OSHAs OSH Barometer or on further data to be collected. Such a methodological approach calls for global, regional and national level monitoring systems to expand their indicators to include and improve the effectiveness of OSH policies and interventions towards safer and healthier workplaces. Conclusion An effective methodological approach is proposed in setting indicators and appropriate data collection, which could improve policy making and effectiveness of OSH systems.