The annual occupational health and safety review
Once a year, each occupational health and safety (OHS) committee conducts an OHS review. The review is carried out both in order to evaluate the previous year’s OHS efforts and to discuss coming OHS tasks and challenges.
The annual OHS review is a legal requirement for the OHS organisation, and is a central instrument for strengthening the organisation’s preventive activities by providing a forum for planning and discussing specific action areas.
The OHS review also helps reveal whether the structure of the OHS organisation is appropriate, and whether meetings and other activities are planned in a way which enables the OHS organisation to perform all relevant tasks.
Objective | Supporting questions |
Evaluate the targets and sub-targets of the previous year | Did you reach the goals you set at last year’s OHS review? What concrete actions did you take? Are there goals which were not reached? If so, why? |
Agree on the topics which will be the focus of OHS collaboration in the coming year | Do you face particular challenges, for example in the form of new work tasks, poor indoor climate, reorganisation, etc.? Possible sources of inspiration for themes include WPA data, data on absence and accidents, data from inspections and the OHS groups’ own input. |
Define action areas and set concrete goals for cooperation in the coming year | What concrete initiatives will you launch, and what results should they produce? Examples include initiatives to improve greater support and collaboration among colleagues, the reduction of workload or efforts to prevent musculoskeletal injuries and disorders. |
Identify the OHS organisation’s competency development needs and schedule OHS training | All members of an OHS group must be offered two days of supplementary OHS training during their first year of service, and 1.5 days of supplementary training in each subsequent years. |
Evacuation and emergency response | At least once a year, all local OHS committees must ensure that evacuation drills are held at the locations they represent. The committees must also ensure that the drills are evaluated, in addition to ensuring that the quality of evacuation procedures and routines is maintained. |
Determine how your cooperation will take place, including forms of cooperation and frequency of meetings | How often should the occupational health and safety committee (AMG/LAMU/FAMU/AAMU) meet? How are OHS groups and LAMU to work together? Is it necessary to bring in special expertise in relation to concrete tasks? |