Analyzing Occupational Safety Managers' and Representatives' Assessments of Collaboration With Occupational Health...

Collaboration between occupational safety (OS) and occupational health care (OHC) is essential for workplace health and safety, yet the experiences of OS actors have been less studied.

To examine OS managers' and representatives' experiences of collaboration with OHC and identify related factors.

This cross-sectional study was conducted in Finland via an online survey in March-April 2025. A total of 222 OS managers and 364 OS representatives responded to a questionnaire. Data were analyzed using non-parametric methods. Group differences were examined with the Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis tests. Spearman's rank correlation was used to explore associations between background variables and attitude statements related to perceived seamless collaboration.

OS managers rated the collaboration as more seamless than OS representatives (mean 7.76 vs. 7.17; p < .001), and more often gave it an excellent rating (39% vs. 22%). Seamless collaboration was particularly associated with the OHC agreement's comprehensiveness, OS experience, and digital tools. The strongest associations were found for OHC participation in OS activities (r = .78) and availability of workload data (r = .77).

The availability of information related to workload factors and the participation of OHC in workplace OS activities are particularly important for a positive experience of collaboration. Seamless collaboration with OHC also requires clear, jointly agreed procedures.

OHC should strengthen its collaboration with OS by clearly identifying and communicating workload and resource factors in the work environment, in order to effectively and impactfully target development measures.