Occupational hazards - Dec/Jan 24

WE'VE ALL been a young worker at some point in our lives. It’s an exciting time when you’re just starting to make your way in the world, considering what direction you want to take going forward. It can also be a daunting time as you experience new things and get asked to take on new tasks. 

While many of them may not recognise it, young workers are in fact an incredibly valuable part of any business. New joiners to the workforce can bring fresh ideas and a fresh approach, new skill-sets and help to contribute towards the innovation, improvement and sustainability of business policies and practices. 

But, unfortunately, it’s not all positive news. According to the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, young people in Europe are 40 per cent more likely to suffer work-related injury than their older peers. 

This is not acceptable, and we have to explore what we can do to ensure health and safety risks are managed, in particular for young workers in temporary contracts, employed through third parties, on zero-hours or short-hours contracts or in non-standard forms of employment (e.g. the gig economy).

Before we go onto that, we need to look at how we define young workers. What ages are we actually referring to? There are actually many differing descriptors, so it’s very much open to debate.

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), there are 541 million young workers around the world, using the United Nations’ definition of ‘youth’ as anyone aged between 15 and 24. This would mean they account for 15 per cent of the world’s labour force.

In the UK, however, young workers are defined as anyone under 18. 

Whichever way we look at it, what we do know is there are many health and safety risks which are specific to young workers, and it’s crucial that these are managed to ensure they bring that value to business and – most important of all – they don’t come to harm.

Firstly, we need to consider that young workers are still developing physically, mentally, and emotionally, and how this impacts on them in the workplace. They are particularly vulnerable as they face unfamiliar risks in new surroundings and may not have reached their full physical capability at this stage of their lives. In addition, they may yet need to develop the psychological capability to understand and manage – or even gain awareness of – risk. 

You can add to this that fact that they may be more at risk due to either individual factors and/or organisational factors and many young workers are part of temporary working arrangements. The informality, instability and non-standard forms of such work only increases the vulnerability of young workers. 

So, we can see a picture emerging of why young workers present a particular set of challenges when it comes to occupational safety and health. 

Organisations need to ensure they manage the specific health and safety risks posed to young workers and that they promote risk education, training and supervision for young people in work. Employers need to be part of this process by recognising their voice and the additional protections those young workers might require, particularly in relation to their physical and psychological capacity.

In this scenario, health and safety professionals can act as facilitators by communicating, training and educating occupational safety and health effectively so they can reach and engage with increasing numbers of younger workers, regardless of their competence, education or cultural background.  

We believe that increasing access of young workers to good work will benefit workers, businesses and society.  

As we’ve established, young workers do present specific challenges when it comes to health and safety. But within every challenge there lies an opportunity – and protecting the next generation of the global workforce can bring significant benefits and ultimately help reaching Target 8.8 of the Sustainable Development Goals on safe and secure working environments for all workers by 2030. 

Dr Ivan Williams Jimenez is senior policy and public affairs manager at the Institution of Occupational Safety and Health. For more information, visit www.iosh.com