An innovative methodology for measuring the effective implementation of an Occupational Health and Safety Management System in the European Union

The first target of the European Union's safety policy is to improve the implementation of Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems, especially for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). Safety investments are un-competitive if compared to other investments, especially for SMEs, due to responsibility attribution management that does not guarantee the exemption of responsibility in the case of unpredictable accidents and to an insufficient incentive policy for enterprises, virtuous in safety investments. For SMEs safety investments are un-profitable also because the individual SME has no real perception of accident risks due both to difficulties in assessing and monitoring the real risk and to the small number of employees. The authors have introduced an index (Efficacy Index) to objectively quantify the effective implementation of an Occupational Health and Safety Management System (OHSMS). The paper shows how the index can be practically applied to a company and what kind of information can be collected and processed to determine the effective implementation of the OHSMS. The paper also aims to define a procedure to demonstrate the exemption of responsibility of a company in the case of an unpredictable accident and to allow further reduction of assurance premiums. In fact, only the exemption of responsibility for employers through effective implementation of the OHSMS, together with an adequate incentive policy, can significantly improve occupational health and safety.