Occupational safety and health in Europe - state and trends 2023 
European Agency for Safety and Health at Work – EU-OSHA 37 
segmentation of enterprises into profit centres, quality management obligations, 
externalisation/subcontracting of service areas like cleaning, canteen, security and so on.  
• Increased communication and interdependency, time coordination and synchronisation 
requirements between units, enterprises and in supply chains.  
• Less direct supervision and more objective and results-based management. 
• Last but not least the massive introduction of ICT and other work-intensifying technologies. 
 
 
 
The main reasons for stagnation after 2005 might be that many of the above-mentioned concepts or 
policies were developed or had their peak during the 1980s, 1990s or the first decade of the 21st century. 
Some of them lost their dynamic (e.g. privatisation) , or have become a kind of standard (management 
by objectives), or were widely implemented in the first decade of the 21 st century (ICT facilities at most 
workplaces); also, some negative impacts on working time were mitigated by state interventions (i.e. the 
EU Working time directive46) or labour agreements.47 
Of particular interest for OSH probably is that the changes in labour legislation, the production in 
international supply chains and technological improvements were sufficiently developed to shift quite a 
relevant part of work to other types of contracts, that is,  to subcontractors, self -employed or 
temporary agent workers  and other forms of non- standard work contracts. Reasons were economic 
savings but also better management of intense work periods, peak times and risky work.  
These developments are probably the main reason that work intensity stayed at a similar level for the 
employed workers with a standard contract while the working conditions of other types of work 
degraded. EU -OSHA has taken this  conclusion already in 2002 in its report 48 on ‘New Forms of 
Contractual Relationships and the Implications for Occupational Safety and Health’:  
‘1. the transfer of risks in the (practical) conditions of work to non- permanent employees and to 
subcontractors;  
2. segmentation in the workforce based on differences in contractual conditions of employment (working 
hours, job insecurity, and qualifications).    
In the first scenario, risks directly related to working conditions (bad ambient and ergonomic conditions) 
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