Changes in the effectiveness of OSH structures

The transformation of the world of work is imposing new demands and burdens on employees. This is also changing the parameters for the OSH structures and instruments that have been in place to date within organisations and across the wider economy.

Although there are diverse support services available to help them comply with statutory requirements, only a limited number of organisations have integrated appropriate measures (e.g. continuous risk assessment) sustainably into their organisational processes.

Variables that influence prevention practice

In view of these discrepancies, BAuA has been examining relevant variables that influence the implementation and configuration of workplace OSH measures. The starting point for its approach to this issue is the understanding that OSH instruments are configured in many different ways within dynamic social contexts. A large number of factors interact here, influencing employees’ safety and how their health is protected. Apart from structural features and work processes, these variables also include the frameworks of reference within which actors operate, their motives, and their attitudes. It is consequently necessary to involve the target groups inside an organisation in the implementation of occupational safety and health interventions.

OSH measures can, on the one hand, modify the technologies deployed, organisational structures, and work processes but, on the other hand, also affect the behaviour and attitudes exhibited by employees and managers. Technologies, structures, and processes vary depending on the sector and the size of the organisation, while the attitudes of the management and workforce are simultaneously shaped by and expressions of the prevention culture that prevails in a particular workplace. A broad spectrum of factors thus determine the configuration of occupational safety and health systems.

Expert report on favourable and unfavourable factors

In workplace contexts, it is necessary to deal with complex impact chains that have favourable or unfavourable impacts on OSH practice at different points. Interesting suggestions for the investigation of impact chains are offered by the expert report Occupational Safety and Health and Workplace Health Promotion - Comparative Analysis of Predictors and Mediators of Good Practice (Arbeitsschutz und betriebliche Gesundheitsförderung – vergleichende Analyse der Prädiktoren und Moderatoren guter Praxis), which was commissioned by BAuA in 2015. Reviews and meta-analyses of 185 intervention studies on occupational safety and health and workplace health promotion that had been published since 2005 formed the data basis for the systematic evaluation of the literature. A high degree of consensus became apparent in the studies about both favourable and unfavourable variables that influence OSH and workplace health promotion schemes. The exact mechanisms by which this happens and the interactions between the numerous variables with effects on outcomes have been and are being systematically investigated in a number of BAuA research projects.

Impact processes in the workplace context

According to the expert report discussed above, complex interventions in organisations are, in principle, influenced by mediators at nine points (see the flow chart of the impact model). It therefore depicts a complex cause/effect process linking interventions and their outcomes. The expert report supplements the impact chain following the implementation of interventions in the organisation with a stabilisation phase during which the new status quo beds in. The new status quo is apparent from, among other things, features of the social context, such as the safety and health climate or employees’ knowledge and attitudes. In turn, these “soft factors” influence relevant indices at the organisation level, such as accident rates, sickness-related absences, and indicators of employee well-being.

Evaluation and exploratory impact research

Impact research, which investigates one or several impact chains of the kind discussed above, may be categorised by whether it takes an exploratory or hypothesis-testing approach. Hypothesis-testing impact research analyses the impact of interventions on a specific variable that has been selected in advance on account of particular assumptions about correlated impacts. This kind of impact research is referred to here as “evaluation”.

By contrast, exploratory impact research examines the impacts correlated with interventions. The aim of this research is to formulate new hypotheses and identify relevant variables for the testing of hypotheses.

Methodological approaches

It should be clear from these comments that factual circumstances and the levels of intervention effectiveness correlated with them have to be interpreted context-dependently in OSH practice. The concept of evidence applied offers a framework of reference that allows the impact chains of complex interventions to be investigated in context (see the graphic “Advanced evidence prism”). Generally, information is only to be accepted as evidence if there is the greatest possible certainty as to its validity.

Based on Elkeles & Broesskamp-Stone, 2010: “Evidenzbasierte Gesundheitsförderung”, in Federal Centre for Health Education (Bundeszentrale für gesundheitliche Aufklärung): Leitbegriffe der Gesundheitsförderung, Cologne

In principle, evidence of causality demands a control group that is not affected by the intervention either beforehand or afterwards and, at the same time, differs as little as possible in terms of its structural social characteristics from the intervention group with which the intervention is implemented. However, since it is frequently difficult to form control groups or not possible at all for ethical reasons, sophisticated statistical methods can represent an alternative under certain circumstances. As a rule, though, these quantitative methods do not permit conclusions to be drawn about the cause-effect relationships that lie behind statistical correlations in impact research and evaluation.

Light can also be shed on possible correlated impacts by qualitative methods, such as guided interviews evaluated using content analysis or reconstructive procedures of the kind associated with grounded theory methodology (GTM). Furthermore, qualitative methods help to develop an understanding of the reasons why a measure affects one or several dependent variables. It is also possible to illuminate complex correlated impacts with qualitative methods for the purposes of formulating theoretical statements. These methods are therefore especially well-suited for exploratory impact research. Exploratory impact research is carried out in particular when there is initially a lack of clarity about an intervention’s impacts or relevant factors that influence organisations’ empirical prevention practice.

Hypotheses about the interaction of unfavourable and favourable factors for effective OSH practice can be developed from the results of exploratory research. Where necessary, these theoretical assumptions and impact models are further underpinned quantitatively by applying mixed-method designs.

BAuA Focus Group on Intervention Research

BAuA’s intervention research also explores correlated impacts, covering the conception, implementation, and impact analysis of OSH measures. In the context of BAuA’s research, the interventions studied are overwhelmingly implemented in workplace settings and intended to promote healthy, human-centred work design. In a broader sense, policy measures can also be regarded as interventions that need to be evaluated. The key feature of intervention research is the conduct of randomised controlled studies.

The Focus Group on Intervention Research has been meeting since June 2021 and essentially pursues two aims: pooling BAuA’s expertise in this field and promoting dialogue between different parts of the Federal Institute and across disciplinary boundaries. The members of the Focus Group come together three times a year to talk about the different intervention research activities being undertaken at BAuA. Both the methodological design of intervention research and the substantive issues and organisational processes relevant to the participants’ current research projects are discussed on these occasions.

Evaluation of the statutory minimum wage

In Germany, the relevant legislation tasks the Minimum Wage Commission with the ongoing evaluation of the statutory minimum wage. The Coordination and Information Office for the Minimum Wage, which is based in BAuA’s Division 1, supports the independent Minimum Wage Commission in the performance of its duties, in particular the ongoing evaluation of the statutory minimum wage. The Minimum Wage Commission submits a report on the impacts of the statutory minimum wage to the German Federal Government every two years, usually in the middle of the year. The Commission’s latest report can always be accessed on its website. The website also documents the Minimum Wage Commission’s resolutions concerning adjustments to the level of the minimum wage, which are adopted every two years as well.

The Minimum Wage Act (Mindestlohngesetz, MiLoG) provides for the impacts of the minimum wage on protection for employees, competitive conditions, and employment to be evaluated. The Minimum Wage Commission looks at these three evaluative dimensions to investigate what impacts the minimum wage has on wages, working times, employment, unemployment, and commercial and non-profit-making organisations. To assist it, the Coordination Office compiles time series analyses of important indicators, such as the numbers of employees in economic sectors with high proportions of workers earning the minimum wage. If the time series reveal conspicuous developments around a date when the minimum wage was raised, this can consequently be interpreted as evidence of its possible impacts.

In isolation, however, it is not possible for time series analyses to identify causal effects because the influence of other factors, such as economic trends, cannot be recorded and measured separately from the impact of the statutory minimum wage. The descriptive time series analyses are therefore supplemented with the results of evaluative econometric studies. The impact of the minimum wage can be isolated from further influential factors using panel data and econometric methods. In addition, the Minimum Wage Commission places contracts with other research institutions for the conduct of qualitative studies, whose results may not be representative and accordingly cannot be applied to all employees or organisations. Nevertheless, qualitative methods provide insights into individual and organisational patterns of behaviour, as well as the motives and expectations that drive them.

The statutory minimum wage is evaluated on an ongoing basis with research conducted in house by the academic staff at the Coordination Office and commissioned from external providers. The final reports on the research projects carried out by third parties and the publications of the Coordination Office’s academic staff can be found on the Minimum Wage Commission’s website. [Link to Minimum Wage Commission website]

Labour inspectorate inspection rates

The Federal Specialist Office for Occupational Safety and Health (Bundesfachstelle für Sicherheit und Gesundheit bei der Arbeit, BfSuGA) has been assigned the task of evaluating the minimum inspection rate laid down in law for Germany’s public labour inspectorates and drawing conclusions from its findings about any changes to which the inspection rate may lead. The Specialist Office will therefore help to foster better understanding of OSH instruments across the economy as a whole.

As of 2026 Germany’s federal states will be obliged under the Occupational Safety and Health Act (Arbeitsschutzgesetz, ArbSchG) to inspect at least 5% of all establishments on their territory each calendar year. The minimum inspection rate was introduced in 2021 by the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (Bundesministerium für Arbeit und Soziales, BMAS) with the aim of strengthening supervisory activities and workplace inspections as important supervisory instruments.

The Federal Specialist Office will take the (statistical) data reported by the federal states as the basis on which to review the impacts of the minimum inspection rate and, where appropriate, conduct studies (qualitative, in particular) that supply more detail about it. This mix of methodologies will offer a coherent picture of the changes that take place within the labour inspectorates and the changes the labour inspectorates themselves bring about thanks to the stimulus imparted by the amended legislation. More detailed information can be found on the website of the Federal Specialist Office for Occupational Safety and Health.