ETUI-ETUC conference 2016 Panel 23 Emmanuelle Brun

1. Safety and health at work is everyone’s concern. It’s good for you. It’s good for business.
Digital work and robotics:
Emerging trends and risks to
Occupational Safety and Health (OSH)
ETUI-ETUC Conference,29th June 2016, Brussels
Emmanuelle Brun, EU-OSHA

2. http://osha.europa.eu
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European Agency for Safety and Health at Work
(EU-OSHA)
The European Union body responsible for the collection, analysis and
dissemination of relevant information to serve the needs of those
involved in safety and health at work
In Bilbao (Spain), since 1996

3. http://osha.europa.eu
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EU-OSHA’s work on Digital work, robotics and OSH
 Foresight on new and emerging OSH risks associated with
ICTs and work location by 2025”
 Expert Review Articles:
• “Crowdsourcing and OSH”, Prof. Huws, University of
Hertfordshire, UK
• “Robotics”, Dr, Adj.Prof. Kaivooja, Turku School of Economics,
University of Turku, FI
https://oshwiki.eu/wiki/Category:Identifying_new_and_emerging_risks

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EU-OSHA’s Foresight on new and emerging OSH
risks associated with ICTs by 2025
 Scenario-building: a tool for strategic futures thinking
− Doesn’t assume the future is pre-determined, doesn’t demand consensus
− To provide insight and stimulate debate into ways to shape the future
 Scenarios of plausible, possible futures to help policy-makers to:
− Gain insights into long-term developments
− Better understand what decisions could help avoid/ encourage these futures
 Participatory: involves EU-OSHA’s stakeholders/policy-makers
− Interviews and workshops with experts and policy-makers, including ETUI
 Multidisciplinary
− Societal, technological, economical, political context are taken into account

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EU-OSHA’s Foresight on new and emerging OSH
risks associated with ICTs by 2025
• Contractor:
Health and Safety Laboratory, SAMI Consulting & Futurizon
• Final report: End 2017
• Current findings - WP1:
− Capture trends and drivers of change through desk research, interviews
and web survey
− 93 Societal, Economic, Environmental, Technological and Political trends

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TECHNOLOGICAL - Examples
5G (and beyond) mobile technology Augmented reality (AR)
Advances in computing power and
speed
Virtual reality (VR)
Internet of things Advanced materials
Big Data Miniaturisation and
Wearables
Artificial intelligence (AI) Immersive communication
Automation Interfacing via other human senses
Collaborative robotics Direct brain to computer
Machine-to-Machine
Communication
Cloud computing
Industry 4.0 Open intellectual property
movement
Additive manufacturing Social media
Bionics Technical challenges for ICT
Drones Cybersecurity

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SOCIETAL - Examples
 Characteristics of the workforce
− Shortage of an active workforce in the EU
− Diverse workforce: more women, ageing and migrant workers and workers with chronic
health problems
− Generational differences in the workplace – Ageing workforce vs. the “digital natives”
• Workplace characteristics
− Flexible working patterns, incl. zero-hours’ contracts/on-demand workers; shorter-term
temporary contracts
− Virtual workplaces: working online anywhere and anytime such that location is irrelevant
− Crowd-working
− Fluid co-working spaces: shared physical work spaces where different individuals are
generally not employed by the same organisation.
− Changes to HR management: monitoring of workers vs. flatter hierarchical structure
 Skills
− Polarisation towards skills and increased inequality
− Gaps in specific ICT skills
− Quickening pace of knowledge transfer
− Life-long learning, job mortgage for training
 Public attitude
− Attitude to and acceptance of ICT development, attitude to on-line privacy

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ECONOMIC - Examples
 Macro-economic environment
− Rising globalisation
− EU growth post financial crash of 2008
− Re-shoring manufacturing due to ICT advances in
manufacture and concerns about quality and rising costs
− Offshoring of knowledge-based work
 Changing industry structure
− Increase in Micro and SMEs
− Rise of the entrepreneur as digital technologies allow
low start-up cost and fast scale-up
− Effect of ICT on other sectors: advances in ICT will
continue to impact on the types of jobs accessible and the skills needed in different sectors
− Alternative distribution chains: increasing sales direct to consumers and between peers
− Increase in e-commerce
− Increasing knowledge economy
− Rise in the service sector
− Growth in sub-contracting
 New business models
− Sharing economy
− Peer-to-peer finance and crowd-sourced funding: allow innovators to get inventions to market
− Servitisation
“I’ll have a Zpad4.2
in lime green and
purple. And a cup
of coffee while I
wait please”
(I used to work just in retail…
Now I am expected to be a
manufacturer as well)

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Opportunities for OSH
 Robotics:
• Removes workers from hazardous jobs:
− Nuclear industry but also in maintenance, logistics etc.
− Drones to avoid work at height or in confined spaces
• Improves quality of work by automating monotonous/repetitive jobs
• Human-enhancement technologies - exoskeletons
 Digitalisation:
• Access to work for a diverse workforce
• New opportunities for flexible ways to combine work and private life
• Reduces the need to travel for work
• New opportunities for OSH communication
− sharing OSH information, providing OSH online training (e.g. massive open
online courses)

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OSH Challenges - Working with robots and AI
 Ergonomic and safety of Human-Machine Interfaces
 Too much trust in the infallibility of technology
 Increasing “technological” complexity
 Lack of understanding of underlying processes
 Training programs for workers programming, operating, maintaining
or sharing the workplace with robots
 Electromagnetic fields
 Pressures on workers to achieve very high efficiency demands at the
same level as a robot
 Need to better understand
• User’s experiences
• Effects of robots on workers’ wellbeing and health
• Psychosocial factors related to robotics in general

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Digital work and the 24/7 global economy
 Need to be available all the time, including at unsocial time
 Blurring of boundaries work-life balance
 Work intensity
• DE: About 60% of employees at internet-based workplaces frequently experience
severe deadline and performance pressure
 Interruptions
 Unpredictability of demand at short notice
 Confusion/conflict between what is important and what is urgent
 Dependence to technology and Fear Of Missing Out
 Virtualisation of work relationships, feeling of isolation
 Lack of clarity over evaluation of worker’s performance and payment
 Lack of understanding and control over what/how data are collected,
shared and used for what purpose
• Big Data: today 2.5 quintillion bytes of data will be generated
 A race to the bottom - undercutting of “good employers”

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Professional
status
Work Mode Place of work
Employmen
t
Status
Final client
Main job or
supplement
Manual
Clerica
l
High-
skill
Online Offline
Hom
e
Empl.
site
Other
Empl-
oyee
Self-
empl.
Individ
-ual
Com-
pany
Main
job
Secon
d-ary
job
Elance
oDesk * * * * *
Click-
worker * * * * *
Task-
rabbit
* * * * *
Wonol
o
* * * * * *
Star-
bucks
* * * * *
Mila
* * * * *
Axiom
* * * * *
Crowd-work: A variety of employment models
Some key variables (by Prof. Ursula Huws):

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Digital work: A variety of OSH challenges
 Ergonomic risks to online workers:
• Intensive use of ICT on devices and in environments not ergonomically
designed for (intense) work, Static work
 Ergonomic to offline crowd-workers
• The most hazardous jobs performed by crowd-workers
• OSH training? Safe equipment and products? Protective equipment?
 How to reach a dispersed workforce?
• Workplace risk assessment?
• OSH training, monitoring and enforcement?
 Multiple jobs: no job for life
• Interaction of exposures
• How to link exposures to health effects?
 Status and responsibilities:
• What is the legal status of online work exchange platforms?
• What’s work? Who is a the employer? Responsible for prevention/OSH?
 Ambiguities/gaps relating to application of social and OSH law
 Disentangling OSH from consumers/general public safety

14. Safety and health at work is everyone’s concern. It’s good for you. It’s good for business.
Thank you for your attention!
Take part in our web survey on key drivers:
https://osha.europa.eu/en/highlights/what-are-future-
implications-ict-work-let-us-know-what-you-think