Occupational safety and health in Europe - state and trends 2023 
European Agency for Safety and Health at Work – EU-OSHA 128 
 
If a risk assessment is conducted just for compliance purposes, and not used appropriately for the 
successful management of OSH and reduction of accidents and occupational diseases, the risk 
assessment may lose its dynamic nature, and findings may be neither implemented nor communicated 
appropriately to employees.  
The types of risks included in risk assessments are related to the risk profiles of different sectors, 
for example, it is likely that risk assessments in heavy industries and manual occupations focus more 
on safety risks. However, while sectoral risk profiles will naturally bias the identification of risks, smaller 
establishments seem to have less of a focus on MSDs or psychosocial risk factors, which would 
suggest that they are less well recognised or understood, in particular for MSEs.415 Establishments also 
report that psychosocial risk factors are more difficult to manage than other OSH risks, while as business 
size grows, so does the proportion of respondents who perceive psychosocial risks as more difficult to  
manage than other OSH risks.416 
ESENER 2019 shows that a reluctance to talk openly  about these issues seems to be the main 
difficulty for addressing psychosocial risks (60% of establishments in the EU27). This, as with all the 
other difficulties considered (lack of awareness among st aff/management and lack of expertise or 
specialist support), is reported in all enterprise sizes but more frequently as establishment size grows.  
Specifically, among those establishments that report having to deal with difficult customers, patients or 
pupils, 51% of those employing 20 or more workers report having a procedure in place to deal with 
possible cases of threats, abuse or assaults by clients, patients or other external persons. This share 
rises to 74% among establishments in human health and social work activities. 
The development of concrete outputs such as measures to better manage risks that can result in 
musculoskeletal diseases has actually seen a decline between 2014 and 2019, as follows: 
• 85% to 77% on the measure of ‘provision of equipment to help with the lifting or moving of loads 
or other physical heavy work’;417  
• 73% to 67% concerning ‘provision of ergonomic equipment’; and 
• 66% to 60% regarding ‘encouraging regular breaks for people in uncomfortable or static 
postures including prolonged sitting’.418  
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