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Nearly 25 years after the publication of Law no. 91-1414 of December 31, 1991, designed to promote occupational risk prevention and transposing European Directive 89/391/EEC, how far have companies come in terms ofoccupational risk assessment?
Has risk assessment become the mainstay and starting point for prevention initiatives, as the European Commission would like?
How are new risks taken into account in our constantly evolving businesses?
Below is a quick reminder of the context and issues involved in assessing occupational risks. We will then provide some answers to these 3 questions.
In France, Law no. 91-1414 of December 31, 1991 (article L. 4121-3 of the Labor Code) required all employers to carry out an assessment of the occupational risks to which their employees are exposed. This obligation took concrete form in 2001 with Decree no. 2001-1016 of November 5, 2001 (article R. 4121-1 of the French Labor Code), which made it compulsory to transpose the results of the risk assessment into a Document Unique (DU).
Since then, all establishments, whatever their sector of activity or size (workforce), have been required to assess their risks and draw up a Document Unique. This document must be updated whenever major changes are made to health and safety conditions or working conditions, and at least once a year.
Under certain conditions, companies with fewer than 11 employees can opt out of the annual update requirement.
Example: evaluation matrix
Legislation does not lay down any specific method forassessing occupational risks. Generally speaking, these assessments involve 3 phases:
- Setting up a working group and identifying work units
- Hazard identification and risk analysis
- Occupational risk assessment
The situation
It has to be said that the situation is very different in France between public and private sector companies. According to a recent study by the French Ministry of Labor, 93% of private-sector companies with over 250 employees have produced a Document Unique. This figure falls to 75% in the hospital civil service and 33% in local authorities.
With regard to SMEs-SMIs, a study commissioned by INRS, the findings of which were made public in 2015, indicated that 90% of SMEs-SMIs with more than 10 employees had undertaken to draw up a Single Document, compared with 46% of VSEs (fewer than 10 employees). Even more worryingly, for more than a third of SME-SMIs, no recent update of their DU, i.e. less than a year old, had been carried out.
The second European company survey on new and emerging risks (2014-2015) tells us that 76% of companies in the 28 countries of the European Union have carried out an occupational risk assessment.
These statistics should be treated with caution. They give only a quantitative, not a qualitative, indication of the occupational risk assessments carried out. Indeed, among the main problems encountered in formalized risk assessments today, a significant number of companies :
- Incomplete risk identification
- An irrelevant and subjective hierarchy
- An unrepresentative division into work units
- A partial update, especially after an accident
- Insufficient assessment of risks likely to generate MSDs
Risk assessment is not an end in itself. It must be the starting point for a genuine prevention approach. It begins with the question "Is it possible to eliminate this risk?" If the answer is "no", then technical and organizational measures need to be implemented, and behavior .... changed to prevent the risk.
Here again, the picture is mixed. Around a quarter of companies claim not to have drawn up an action plan following their risk assessments. Nevertheless, it should be noted that all these studies (Ministry of Labor, INRS, European Agency for Safety and Health at Work) point to a steady improvement over the last few years, even for SMEs. A steady increase in the percentage of companies drawing up and updating occupational risk assessments, and implementing preventive measures.
Occupational risk assessment and prevention approaches
There is sometimes confusion between the terms danger, exposure, risk and damage. Despite this, French companies, especially those with more than 50 employees, have truly integrated risk assessment into their prevention processes.
This work, which may seem long and tedious, ultimately provides a clear, objective picture of the risks faced by employees.
It is important that this assessment be carried out by a multidisciplinary team. The aim is to identify hazards exhaustively, analyze risks appropriately and prioritize them appropriately.
ILO-OSH 2001 / OHSAS 18001 (soon to be ISO 45001) place occupational risk assessment at the heart of occupational health and safety management systems. These standards call on companies to use the results of their risk assessment as a basis for developing their safety policy. This enables them to draw up a safety policy, define objectives and build action plans.
REMINDER:
- A hazard is the intrinsic property of a product, equipment or situation that is likely to cause damage to the employee's mental or physical integrity,
- Risk / Damage. Risk is the possibility of an encounter between man and a danger to which he is exposed. Damage is an undesired event resulting from risk.
After imposing a general safety obligation on every company, Article L.4121-2 of the French Labor Code places risk assessment at the heart of the prevention system.
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Article L.4121-2
The employer implements the measures provided for in Article L.4121-1* on the basis of the following general principles of prevention:
- 1- Avoid risks;
- 2- Assess risks that cannot be avoided ;
- 3- Combating risks at source ;
- ...
* Art L.4121-1: The employer takes the necessary measures to ensure the safety and protect the physical and mental health of workers.
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For certain risks (chemical, biological, mechanical vibration, etc.), the French Labor Code also provides for dedicated and specific assessments, with reference values for certain risks.
The main preventive actions undertaken following the assessment of occupational risks are as follows:
- Modification of workstations (layout)
- Revision of work organization and exposure times (development of multi-skilling)
- Improved medical follow-up
- Installation of collective and individual protective equipment
- Review or define roles and responsibilities and draw up "job descriptions".
- Training courses
- Field audits
- Setting up performance indicators
And tomorrow
Companies are faced with major human, social and financial challenges. The number of recognized occupational illnesses is increasing. In this context, they must prevent risks to their employees.
Increasingly late retirement, a sometimes hectic pace of work and varied career paths. These are important factors to take into account when it comes to prevention.
New risks have emerged, or at least begun to be taken into account, in recent years, including psychosocial risks (PSR). Today, they represent a real challenge for companies. How can they be objectively assessed? How can they be prevented? And, more generally, how can we build a corporate model that promotes well-being in the workplace?
Today, the assessment of these new risks is necessary. However, the methodology needs to be adapted to assess RPS in particular, or factors likely to cause RPS (e.g.: traditional rating criteria: severity, frequency of exposure, etc. are not relevant in this case).
Through pragmatic assessment approaches, we can reasonably assume that other risks that are currently poorly understood or little known (risks linked to electromagnetic fields, nanotechnologies, biotechnologies ....) can be assessed in greater detail. Once the scientific and medical data/studies are more advanced, appropriate preventive measures can be taken.
Reminder: in the meantime, if necessary, take them into account with the data in your possession.
Finally, each company must maintain a dynamic over time. It must allocate resources to updating its occupational risk assessment, so that it can build on the results to develop an effective, long-term prevention approach.