The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) brings its campaign on ‘Working together for risk prevention’ to a close at a major conference in Bilbao on 11 and 12 November 2013.

The two-day Healthy Workplaces Summit brings together leading occupational safety and health (OSH) professionals for networking and discussion, enabling the exchange of good practice and the development of future strategies.

Dr Christa Sedlatschek, Director of EU-OSHA, said: “The Healthy Workplaces campaigns have proven once again to be one of the most successful and effective ways of promoting good OSH at a grass-roots level. We are delighted that so many companies and organizations across Europe took part in this risk prevention campaign – they all understand and appreciate the huge contribution that OSH can make to improving working conditions.”

Representatives of the European Commission are attending, together with representatives from the EU Presidency, EU social partners, and national and local government who have backed the campaign.

Together with EU-OSHA’s Europe-wide network of focal points, a record number of official campaign partners – 87 companies and organizations – took part in the campaign, which has been running since April 2012 and has encouraged employees and managers to work together to manage risks in the workplace.

The winners of the European Good Practice Awards – ten organizations recognized for their outstanding collaboration between workers and managers in risk prevention – are also present, representing sectors such as agriculture, health care and manufacturing.

The winner of the first ever Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) OSH award is also revealed at the summit. The new award, the first within the EEN to recognize excellent promotion of OSH, is presented to the Spanish ‘Confederación de Empresarios de Aragón’ for their prevention campaign “From school to work placement,” which reached more than 400 students, 12 teachers and 110 small and medium-sized enterprises.

Summit delegates have the opportunity to take part in one of three OSH workshops, choosing from good practice in management leadership and worker participation, benchmarking, and successful networking and campaigning.

The event also offers a preview of EU-OSHA’s 2014–15 campaign, “Healthy Workplaces Manage Stress,” which will be launched in spring 2014. The campaign will continue the collaborative theme and apply it to managing work-related stress and psychosocial risks, the second-most reported OSH problem in Europe.

The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) contributes to making Europe a safer, healthier and more productive place to work. The agency researches, develops, and distributes reliable, balanced, and impartial safety and health information and organizes pan-European awareness raising campaigns. Set up by the European Union in 1996 and based in Bilbao, Spain, the agency brings together representatives from the European Commission, Member State governments, employers’ and workers’ organizations, as well as leading experts in each of the EU-28 Member States and beyond.

 http://osha.europa.eu

The 2012–13 Healthy Workplaces Campaign “Working together for risk prevention”is decentralizsed and is designed to help national authorities, companies, organizations, managers, workers and their representatives and other stakeholders to work together to enhance health and safety in the workplace. The campaign supports a wide range of activities at national and European level, including national partnership meetings and seminars. Smaller enterprises are particularly welcome to take part. http://www.healthy-workplaces.eu