Occupational safety and health in Europe - state and trends 2023 
European Agency for Safety and Health at Work – EU-OSHA 126 
Assessment).396 Many good examples of support for m icro and small enterprises (MSEs) are available 
as identified in the comprehensive EU-OSHA reports on OSH in MSEs.397 
Often, guidance documents show the difference between good practice in prevention and risky 
practices, for example, the SLIC guidance on measures against exposure to respirable crystalline silica 
at construction sites.398 There are many of these good or best practice examples in literature,  but there 
is rarely a  quantitative estimate of the occurrence of good  (or moderate) versus poor practice 
before and after the publication and promotion of such guidance documents, which would be crucial to 
estimate the impact of guidance and tools.  
Often the support of a proper implementation is done by European national, sectoral and regional 
employers’ and workers’ associations. They contribute to supervision and imple mentation by 
consultation or participation in steering committees and so on. Some of them produce specific OSH 
information or guidance for their members, a dapted to the main topics of the organisation. 399 They 
participate in the development of national strategic approaches or OSH  campaigns. In all EU Member 
States there exist fora for social dialogue at regional, sectoral  or national level (overview in OSHWiki 
articles on OSH national systems 400). At EU level more than 40 sectoral Social Dialogue Committees 
and a cross-industry social dialogue committee is working on topics of EU-wide relevance.401  
In the frame of social di alogue, employer federations and trade unions agree on the regulation of 
working conditions in collective agreements without intervention or close reference to state 
regulations, for example, on working time or telework rules. The Eurofound ‘Database of wages, working 
time and collective disputes’ provides an EU-wide overview on such agreements.402 
In some countries, employers’ and workers’ associations are governing widely independent OSH 
institutions (e.g. Austrian AUVA or German Berufsgenossenschaften) th at act in the frame of state 
regulation but with quite considerable independent decision power. 403 In some cases they dispose of 
significant resources and are major players for some areas, like training of OSH  professionals, or 
compensation of occupational diseases. They can even implement financial incentives to initiate better 
OSH practices.404  
Management systems and policies contribute to better prevention; they include ethical considerations 
(corporate responsibility programmes, s ustainability and environmental reports), or quality objectives 
(quality management) particularly in global and large companies. Most of them cover all aspects of the 
business activities and OSH is one of these aspects. Well known are the standards of the International 
Organisation for Standardization (ISO), namely ISO 9001, Quality management systems, ISO 14001 
Environmental management systems -  Requirements with guidance for use, and ISO 31000, Risk 
management - Principles and guidelines.405  
If the OSH aspects in such systems are not sufficiently covered, enterprises can introduce specific OSH 
management systems. ISO published the global standard ISO 45.000- 2018 Occupational health and 
safety management systems - Requirements with guidance for use developed by ISO. According to ISO, 
these systems have the following function:    
‘OH&S management controls the conditions and factors that affect, or could affect, the health and safety 
of workers (including temporary workers and contractor personnel), visitors, or any other person in the 
workplace, to avoid their ill health and/or injury.’406 
Enterprises can also use other OSH  management standards. At international level , the ILO published