Strengthening the role of employment injury schemes to help prevent occupational accidents and diseases

The overall aim of the guide is to provide policy recommendations for future direction in the area of employment injury (EI) schemes. The guide is targeted at a mixed audience of national authorities dealing with occupational safety and health (OSH).

The guide gives an overview of the principles behind EI schemes, the different types or models of schemes, areas such as coverage, benefits, contributions, and administration and oversight, and preventive programmes and activities. Some examples of preventive work already being conducted by EI schemes are highlighted as well as the benefits this work brings.

The rationale for this guide comes from requests from the ILO constituents who have expressed the need for guidance on improving EI schemes, especially in relation to the need to highlight the role of prevention.

The guide is mainly targeted at Ministries of Labour, of Health and of Social Affairs or Social Security, and national authorities and institutions dealing with social security and social insurance, the social partners (employers’ and workers’ organizations) as well as policy-makers amongst the ILO’s tripartite constituents.

It aims to encourage active collaboration among all stakeholders involved in OSH and EI schemes, from conducting preventive work and reporting incidents right through rehabilitation to paying benefits to injured workers.

This report will serve as a useful source of information, experiences and good practice to encourage all parties concerned with preventing occupational accidents and diseases to work together to develop a more preventive role of employment injury schemes.

This report was produced under the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) project "Linking safety and health at work to sustainable economic development: From theory and platitudes to conviction and action".