Rodríguez de la Calle: “occupational hazard prevention faces new challenges”

The Community of Madrid recently approved the VI Guiding Plan for Occupational Hazards 2021-2024. What are its main goals?

The plan aims to provide continuity and strengthen the policies developed on matters of occupational health and safety, guided through the successive approved guiding plans, which have turned out to be useful instruments in promoting that economic development should also include an improvement in the health and safety conditions in our region.

We are in a changing situation in the production sectors and in the job market, with new and diverse forms of corporate organisation and work, as well as the incorporation of new methodologies, materials and technologies, which all increases certain risks or leads to emerging risks. If we also add other circumstances derived from the pandemic caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2, it is obvious that occupational hazard prevention is facing new challenges. And, of course, the VI Guiding Plan must respond to this reality and the current situation by including important new items.

Production of this plan is also in alignment with short- and medium-term preventive policies, contemplated in the occupational hazard prevention strategies that were developed in recent years, both nationally and in Europe. It focuses more on the challenges and objectives agreed in the Strategic Framework of the European Union on matters of workplace health and safety 2014-2020, and on the Spanish Workplace Health and Safety Strategy 2015-2020, current when this project was produced, notwithstanding the adaptation of the measures contemplated therein to the future strategies that may be implemented during the lifetime of this VI Guiding Plan.

Along these lines of prevention that you mention, what specific new items are included in the new regulations?

One of the main new items lies in the content. Unlike other plans, which were more detailed in their development, in this one we have chosen to determine main lines of work, so that it is the Regional Institute of Workplace Health and Safety (IRSST in Spanish), along with the social agents, the ones to establish the necessary actions based on what is negotiated, allowing adaptation of the measures to the specific circumstances at any time and to the new Spanish Strategy for Workplace Health and Safety.

As for the main general lines defined in the VI Guiding Plan, a first line would aim to promote integration and leadership in occupational hazard prevention to achieve a future where the workplace is safe and healthy. The aim within this line, the most extensive of them all, is to promote integration of occupational hazard prevention to favour company competitiveness through innovation and digital transformation. It also includes actions to promote labour mediation, as an instrument to boost a healthy labour environment, as well as the creation of R+D+i lines aimed at research on the effects of working conditions on employee health.

Reinforcement of training and publication of specialised knowledge, as well as a preventive culture, is another of the main general lines. The main new aspect of this line is the promotion of a preventive culture through mostly practical training actions aimed at both the current and future working population, where it is important to reach the educational system. Also important is the promotion of awareness-raising for occupational hazard prevention, with special attention afforded to ergonomic and psychological-social risks.

Specific actions are also included against emerging risks derived from demographic evolution, technology and new forms of work organisation, placing special emphasis on psychological-social risks, as well as those derived from the ageing of the workforce, digitalisation; remote working and occupational hazards in the Green Employment environment and the just transition, among others.

Within the fourth line, occupational illnesses remain at the forefront, as well as other damage that has increased, such as, for example, that caused by musculoskeletal disorders (MSD). The fifth main line refers to workers with specific risks, which more than a new item, is a constant in the work of the IRSST.

How is the Community’s labour and social diversity shown?

Once again, it is deemed that the labour, social, corporate and territorial diversity in the region is an essential aspect when developing its content, but, unlike the previous plan, it defines different cross-sectional axes. Among these, we highlight as new items the perspective of gender and diversity in occupational hazard prevention, the role of both the social agents and the Administrations themselves, including the Regional Institute of Workplace Health and Safety, as agents of change for the Madrid preventive movement, and the new challenges brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic.

For the first time, instrumental lines have been included to favour the development and evaluation of the plan. Among these, the definition of indicators and the running of the Madrid Survey on Work Conditions, as a guarantee of the efficiency of the proposed measures, and the boosting of the functions of the Observatory for Occupational Hazard Prevention of the Community of Madrid, as a complementary agency for the proper development of the planned actions. Annual monitoring and evaluation reports will also be produced, as a dynamic mechanism for ongoing improvement. Lastly, the plan again includes an initial commitment to funding for the group of actions to be implemented during the years that the plan is in force, which has been calculated at €56.25 million.

What Covid-19-related prevention elements have been introduced?

The plan takes into account the changing reality and diversity existing in all areas of Madrid society and it faces it through what we have called cross-sectional lines. Given the importance of the phenomenon and its effect on all areas, Covid-19 has a specific cross-sectional line, created with the idea to collaborate with the public health measures, according to the different economic reactivation stages, to face the new challenges brought about by the pandemic.

The commitment undertaken is for the IRSST, as the managing agency for the occupational health and safety policies of the Community of Madrid, to provide updated consultancy on the protection steps that are to be implemented in the workplaces, following the recommendations of the Health Authorities. Additionally, to provide continuity and monitor the lines signed by the social agents in the “Framework Agreement to promote collaboration on occupational hazard prevention during the pandemic caused by Covid-19”, by publishing practical guides, through consultancy, training activities and publicity and awareness-raising actions for companies and the working population of our region. All this with special attention to the groups of vulnerable and at-risk workers.

What matters does the plan contemplate regarding the new emerging risks in society, digitalisation, sustainability and new forms of work?

Specific actions are included against emerging risks derived from demographic evolution, technology and new forms of work organisation, placing special emphasis on psychological-social risks, as well as those derived from the ageing of the workforce, digitalisation; remote working and occupational hazards in the Green Employment environment and the just transition, among others. This can be seen throughout the entire plan, although it is clear and manifest in certain specific areas.

Thus, in the first main line, where it aims to promote leadership and integration of occupational hazard prevention, it is proposed to boost integration of occupational hazard prevention to favour company competitiveness, through innovation and the digital transformation. This action is aimed for executives and middle-management, designated workers, prevention agents and other prevention resources, especially through training and awareness-raising actions. Likewise, new ways are proposed to put into practise everything pertaining to occupational hazard prevention in digital and interconnected environments (Project “Ventura 2020”). 

An R+D+i line will also be created to research the effect of working conditions on employee health by creating professorships and signing collaboration agreements with universities and other research agencies, to promote studies focusing on analysing the positive impact on health of Occupational Hazard Prevention, among other activities.

The third main line of the plan is dedicated to specific actions against the emerging risks derived from demographic evolution, technology and new forms of work organisation. This line will focus on identifying and preventing psychological-social risks in the workplace, analysing new labour realities and their effect on hazard prevention and on the health of the working population: ageing of the working population, digitalisation, remote working and work on digital platforms, and identifying and preventing occupational risks pertaining to Green Employment and the just transition, among other matters.