It is generally accepted that small enterprises with less than 50 employees have higher exposure to occupational hazards than larger organisations. Small enterprises often have limited resources to prioritise these risks and to improve the working environment, and they often have difficulties in complying with legislation. Small enterprises constitute a major challenge for the society’s effort to improve occupational injury management as they, on one hand, have extensive needs, and on the other hand, are difficult to reach. Just one worksite injury could produce serious economic consequences to a unprepared small business.

Central West Health and Rehabilitation work specifically with small enterprises as a trusted intermediary to assist with injury management processes.

Hasle and Limborg have developed a model for reaching out to small enterprises with intervention programmes. The model emphasises the need for inclusion of not only the concrete changes of the working environment but also the process in which small enterprises are approached and motivated to start a change process.

 

The model can be used to construct a stepwise procedure for the design of working environment programmes. The idea is to start from the right side of the model and subsequently work backwards through the chain in order to end up with a full designed programme. The design procedure therefore has five steps:

This method has been used in the development of a practical intervention programme aimed at small construction enterprises. The transparency opens the possibility for critical discussions and thereby improvements of both design criteria and design conclusions.