European Survey of Enterprises on New and Emerging Risks, 2014

EU-OSHA’s European Survey of Enterprises on New and Emerging Risks (ESENER) is an extensive survey that looks at how European workplaces manage safety and health risks in practice. Thousands of businesses and organisations across Europe are asked to respond to a questionnaire that focuses on: •General safety and health risks in the workplace and how they are managed •Psychosocial risks, such as stress, bullying and harassment •Drivers of and barriers to OSH management •Worker participation in safety and health practices. The results from these interviews are complemented by secondary analyses involving a series of in-depth studies that focus on specific topics. Quantitative and qualitative research methodologies are applied in these studies to help better understand the main findings from the survey. The fieldwork for the second wave of ESENER was carried out in the summer-autumn of 2014. The survey provides an invaluable up-to-date snapshot of how workplace risks, and especially new and emerging risks, are being managed across Europe. The focus on new and emerging risks means that the responses shed light on underexplored and increasingly important areas of OSH, such as psychosocial risks, which are a growing area of concern in European workplaces. The 2014 survey is even more detailed and extensive than the first one, with the sample sizes increased by half, and in three countries the national samples have been additionally boosted. ESENER-2 includes micro enterprises of 5 to 10 employees and agricultural businesses for the first time. Five new countries — Albania, Iceland, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia — have been added to the 31 that were included in 2009. Some of the topics covered are: •Musculoskeletal disorders •The organisation of OSH management •Approaches to worker participation in OSH ESENER provides much-needed data to policy-makers and researchers at national and European level. There is no other EU-level information source on how OSH is managed in businesses. ESENER plays a key role in helping EU-OSHA to provide cross-nationally comparable information that can contribute to OSH policy-making.