Engaging Occupational Safety and Health Professionals in Bridging Research and Practice: Evaluation of a Participatory Workshop Program in the Danish Construction Industry.

Engaging occupational safety and health (OSH) professionals has scarcely been evaluated as a means for transferring knowledge to practice about physical workload in the construction industry. The aim of this work was to examine how participants used and incorporate research-based knowledge from a three-day training course into practice. Twenty OSH professionals from the Danish construction industry participated in a workshop-training course. Researchers presented new knowledge and results about physically demanding work. The participants selected which themes they wanted to work with and developed an action plan. Evaluation was done using surveys and phone interviews. Analysis was based on how the OSH-professionals describe themselves, organizations, and the construction industry. Participant's average scores on the level of implementation of their chosen action plans were 3 (on a response scale from 1-5, where 1 is 'to a very low degree' and 5 is 'to a very high degree') immediately after the workshop program and 2.5 at follow-up. Qualitative evaluations showed that actions had been initiated, and some progress had been made. The participants were satisfied with the workshop course and the possibility to increase their knowledge through inputs from researchers and colleges and strongly believe that they would succeed with implementing their action plans in the future.

Safety climate as a predictor of work ability problems in blue-collar workers: prospective cohort study.

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate whether safety climate items would be predictive of future physical and mental work ability among blue-collar workers. METHODS: Blue-collar workers (n=3822) from the Danish Work Environment and Health study replied to questions on safety climate, physical and mental work ability, and health in 2012 and 2014. Using multivariate logistic regression, we estimated the association of number of safety climate items (0-5) in 2012 with physical and mental work ability in 2014. Potential confounders included sex, age, socioeconomic class, occupational group, lifestyle (smoking habits and body mass index) and previous accidents. RESULTS: In the fully adjusted model, workers reporting two and three or more safety climate problems (reference: 0) had higher risk for reduced physical work ability at follow-up (OR 1.29 [95% CI 1.03 to 1.61] and OR 1.52 [95% CI 1.27 to 1.84], respectively). Similar outcomes were observed for mental work ability. Using number of safety climate items as a continuous variable, a doseresponse association existed both for physical and mental work ability (trend-test <0.0001). CONCLUSION: A dose-response association between the number of safety climate items at baseline and lower physical and mental work ability was detected after 2 years. Safety climate items should be highly prioritised in blue-collar companies.