European Health and Safety Week: Healthy Workplaces for All Ages
This week marks the annual European health and safety week, which this year runs from October 24 to 30. The theme of the campaign for 2016 is healthy workplaces for all ages.
The campaign, which takes place across the European Union, aims to promote the business benefits older workers can provide and ways in which they can be retained in the workforce.
Recent research by Healthy Workplaces, which runs the annual campaign, was released last week. It revealed ways in which older workers can benefit a business, as well as highlighting the issues they may face at work.
The research shows that while older workers may struggle with shift work, for example, they tend to show better judgment, job-specific knowledge, ability to reason, and motivation to learn more than their younger colleagues.
The research also identified a number of occupational health and safety issues which may affect older workers, such as exposure to chemical and physical hazards over a long period of time. The TUC has released a guide to promote health and safety for older workers.
The Healthy Workplaces website contains a number of useful resources for employers and workers, giving advice on how they can work together to allow healthy ageing and retirement.
Today marks National Inspection Day, which takes place on the Wednesday of each European health and safety week. The TUC is encouraging all health and safety reps to carry out inspections of their workplaces today, using this guide to help them.