Joint German Occupational safety and Health Strategy (GDA)

Healthy, qualified and motivated workers in companies and administrative bodies are a major precondition for coping with the major transformations in progress in the world of work; they are the driving force between innovations, they thus secure competitiveness and, in the final analysis, the financial success of the companies.

Occupational safety and health is of great importance for the smooth running of all working and production processes in an establishment. Good corporate occupational safety and health organisation and a perception of occupational safety and health geared to prevention mean that workers are more effectively protected against the hazards of the modern world of work, that they go absent less for reasons of work accidents or illness, that they take personal responsibility for their own safety and health and that they develop a greater work motivation. Safe and healthy workplaces therefore provide the basis for enduring efficiency in the workers and at the same time they help ensure an enhanced quality of life at work.

The "Risk Assessment Portal" supports the effective realisation of occupational safety and health in companies, especially small and medium-sized enterprises. It is aimed at employers and workers and provides a platform which can be used to identify hazards in the company with no great effort or expense, and it also helps make a correct estimate of the scope, intensity and extent of such hazards.

The risk assessment is the central preventive tool of occupational safety and health. It is the prerequisite for counteracting the hazards identified with just the right and effective protective measures, and this on a sound basis. Practical aids tailored to this particular task have been developed by those actively involved in occupational safety and health, especially accident insurance institutions and the occupational safety and health authorities of the federal states. The Risk Assessment Portal brings these aids together and can be used to highlight to companies quickly and with practical examples how they can find a concrete orientation on an up-to-date basis and what supportive practical aids are available for the risk assessment. To back this up, criteria for quality-assured practical instructions relating to the risk assessment are specified, criteria which the National Occupational Safety and Health Conference agreed on in May 2009.

The Portal fits into the European campaign on the risk assessment in 2008/2009 and it is a component part of the Joint German Occupational Safety and Health Strategy.