How to conduct systematic work environment management

As an employer, you are required to work with the work environment in a systematic and planned way. You are responsible for the work environment and must ensure that work environment management is a natural part of your operations. The key to good work environment management is to work preventively – it benefits everyone.

The rules for conducting systematic work environment management apply to all employers and make it possible to identify risks before anything happens. With the help of digital services, you can identify what is important for employees’ health and which measures actually produce results. With Wellr, for example, you can evaluate, risk assess and monitor the work environment, as well as plan the work environment activities for the entire year.

Systematic work environment management consists of a number of activities:

Investigate. Create routines for examining the work environment by answering these questions: What will you investigate, when will it be done, and how will you investigate? Who will do it? The Swedish Work Environment Authority recommends that you review the work environment regularly (for example once a year), but also in connection with changes. With Wellr, your company has the opportunity to do exactly that with the help of our work environment assessments. With the click of a button, you can send out a new survey, and you can also add a so‑called pulse survey if you want to look at something specific, such as the current workload.

Investigate ill health and accidents. Has anyone become ill because of the work? Has an accident occurred, or has something serious almost happened? Only when you understand why it happened can you prevent it from happening again.

• Let someone at the workplace investigate what has happened. You can also get help from occupational health services.

• Make sure several people are involved in the investigation. For example, you can interview different people about the incident.

• Describe what happened: What was the task? Who was involved? Where did it happen? What happened? What illness or injury occurred or could have occurred? What happened beforehand?

• Analyse: How could we have prevented it from happening? What can we do to make sure it does not happen again? Write a short report. Inform everyone in the workplace.

• Start the investigation immediately after someone has become ill, been involved in an accident or been close to a serious incident.

Assess the risks. What have you found when you have examined and investigated the work environment? Are there different risks for women and men? How great are the risks, and what can they lead to? At Wellr, for example, we use a pre‑filled work environment handbook that can easily be adapted to your own operations. It also contains templates for risk assessment. Identify whether the risks are serious by answering the questions: How likely is it that someone will become ill or be injured? How often can it happen? How serious could the injury be? Always assess risks that you discover during investigations or in other ways. Do not forget to evaluate the risks when you are about to change something, for example move to new premises or change job tasks.

Address the risks. Do this as quickly as possible, and always start with the most serious risks. Sometimes temporary measures are needed before you can implement the final/planned measure. The measures will vary depending on which risks you have identified. Examples of measures may include giving employees more varied tasks, scheduling time for rest, distributing the work among more people, or investing in more training. Keep in mind that when several strain factors interact, the risks increase.

Draw up an action plan. Always draw up an action plan for the risks that you cannot address immediately.

Check the measures. Check that you have implemented the measures and that they have worked. Sometimes a measure leads to a new risk. In that case, you need to identify and address that new risk as well. Start from the action plan. Have you addressed the risks? Yes: Have you updated the action plan? Yes, but there are new risks: Investigate the new risks, decide how they should be handled and update the action plan. No: Find out why you have not addressed them and update the action plan.