1. Introduction to the Occupational Health and Safety Organization

Briefly about the topic

The management in every business must work together with their employees to ensure safety and health at the workplace.

It is the employer who has the responsibility to make sure that the workplace upholds the Law on Working Conditions. The employer has a duty to involve the employees and the employees have a duty to participate in the cooperation.

In a workplace with 1-9 employees, the cooperation must happen as an ongoing process between employer and employees.

In workplaces with 10-34 employees, the cooperation on safety and health must happen in an Occupational Health and Safety Organization (OHS), which includes every employee in the company.

The Occupational Health and Safety Organization consists of one or more from the management, and one or several chosen work environment representatives with the employer or the employer’s representative as chairman. The function of a supervisor must be handled by a person who’s in charge of the specific department in question, while the work environment representative must be chosen among employees without the same type of responsibility and who will represent the employees, their knowledge and experience.

In a workplace with 35 or more employees, an OHS organization must be established in two levels, so that you have one overall work environment committee and one or more work environment groups.

A work environment group consists of an assigned supervisor and an assigned work environment representative.

The work environment committee consists of supervisors and work environment representatives from one or several departments along with the employer or the employer’s representative as chairman.

The amount of work environment groups must be determined by a principle of subsidiarity that there are no more members per group than possible for the work environment groups to be able to fulfill their tasks at a satisfactory level. The number of groups may also vary and new groups can occur in relation to new projects, restructuring etc.

What does the OHS organization do?
The Occupational Health and Safety Organization (OHS) must continuously work with the business’ work environment and has both daily and strategic tasks.

That means that the OHS has to uncover and solve existing workplace-related problems and work on preventing new problems from occurring.

Besides that OHS also have an important job in motivating colleagues to work towards a good work environment.

Why is this topic relevant to our industry?

Because of the big turnover of employees in this industry, it can probably be a little difficult to establish and convey the business’ OHS organizations.

How can you attract employee representatives to the OHS organizations?

Which advantages can there be to making the orientation of the OHS a part of your onboarding program?

How can you convey what you’ve been working on with OHS to the employees?

Would it give the business a better reputation if the OHS organization was obvious to the outside world?

What does it say about the topic in the legislation?

- Especially important to this topic, are chapters 1, 2 and 3 of the legislation which are about how to organize your Occupational Health and Safety organization as well as the principle of subsidiarity in § 16.

Where can you find inspiration?

- Read pages 26-73 in the book you’ve been handed out: “Fakta om arbejdsmiljø 2022”

- Link: OHS in the industry

  • If you have chosen this assignment on an orientational level, you may familiarize yourself with ordinance Nr 1181 on cooperation and safety, chapters 1, 2 and 3. They are about how to organize your OHS organization, etc., and going into the principle of subsidiarity in § 16.

    How to solve the assignment:
    You must via a written essay, a movie/audio file etc. convey the following:

    - The task number/which topic you have chosen.

    - To describe the information you have read up on and the reflections it's given you.

    - Seeing as the Mandatory Occupational Health and Safety Organization course is about working together, you must discuss the topic/contents with a colleague or your work environment group.

    - The purpose is for you to grow more knowledgeable of how you can work together to prevent and control different challenges that may occur relating to the topic.

    Think of at least 2 learning points - meaning:

    Your thoughts/stance on the themes you have chosen in regards to the conditions at your workplace. It has to be something you/You have to be aware of - mention examples of this.

    Criteria for the teacher's feedback:
    It's important that you can tell from the assignment that they've spent time working with the contents of the theme and the evaluations it's brought with the research. It's important that you are able to see that the new information has been discussed at the work place. Everyone gets constructive feedback on all of their assignments.

    Remember to upload your assignment on Teams before the deadline.

  • If you have chosen this assignment on an orientational level, you may familiarize yourself with ordinance Nr 1181 on cooperation and safety §§ 25, 27 and 28 where you can read about responsibility, roles and tasks in the work with the work environment.

    In these paragraphs you can find information on who has the overall responsibility for the employees safety and health, for the prevention of safety and health related risks. You can also read about information, instruction and onboarding.

    In addition to that you'll get learn about how a work environment representative is chosen by the employees, and how the employer must pick a number of supervisors according to §16.

    In chapter 7 you can read about the Mandatory Occupational Health and Safety training course and the supplementary courses.


    How to solve the assignment:

    You must via a written essay, a movie/audio file etc. convey the following:

    - The task number/which topic you have chosen.

    - To describe the information you have read up on and the reflections it's given you.

    - Seeing as the Mandatory Occupational Health and Safety Organization course is about working together, you must discuss the topic/contents with a colleague or your work environment group.

    The purpose is for you to grow more knowledgeable of how you can work together to prevent and control different challenges that may occur relating to the topic.

    Think of at least 2 learning points - meaning:

    Your thoughts/stance on the themes you have chosen in regards to the conditions at your workplace. It has to be something you/You have to be aware of - mention examples of this. You may be inspired by the questions but it is not a requirement.

    Criteria for the teacher's feedback

    It's important that you can tell from the assignment that they've spent time working with the contents of the theme and the evaluations it's brought with the research. It's important that you are able to see that the new information has been discussed at the work place. Everyone gets constructive feedback on all of their assignments.

    Remember to upload you assignment on Teams before the deadline.