An Exploratory Study on New and Emerging Occupational Safety and Health Risks Associated with the Digital Market

Abstract

Europe wants to prepare its businesses and citizens for a sustainable and more prosperous human-centric digital future.The path to the translation into reality of the digital objectives will bring a complement to the existing rights and principles regarding the protection of data and private life, the digital rights of citizens as well as guidelines for companies regarding new technologies.Globally, the occupational health and safety risk assessment process is implemented using hundreds of dedicated tools, used in a flexible and complementary way, according to clearly specified criteria. Customized concepts offer a major potential for improving the management of safety and health at work in economic organizations, regardless of their size, form of ownership or other conditioning categories, sectors of activity or public institutions. This paper aims to make contributions regarding the forecasting and identification of new and emerging OSH challenges related to how digitization would change automated systems, work equipment and tools used, how work is organized, business models, hierarchies and relationships, the characteristics of the force of work, responsibilities for OSH management, skills, knowledge and information needed to work.