Ready for the future?

The world of work is undergoing profound change. Digitalisation, demographic change, and increasing deregulation are shaping the conditions under which work is carried out, and they raise new questions for occupational safety and health.

The digital transformation has made cross-border work easier. Working from home is no longer just an emergency solution, but has become a structural work model in many sectors. Employees can work independently of location, often across national borders. This new flexibility not only changes the relationship between work and private life, but also presents companies with new challenges. Tax and social security issues must be clarified when employees work from abroad. The national responsibilities of social security systems increasingly collide with the reality of digitally mobile forms of work.

At the same time, the social fabric within companies is changing. Where physical proximity is missing, the loss of collegial bonds, team cohesion, and informal support becomes a risk. This creates new challenges, especially for psychological occupational safety. Yet digitalisation, AI, and mobile work also offer great potential. They enable more efficient processes, relief in physically demanding tasks, and improved work-life balance. These opportunities, however, must be actively shaped. Because change is unstoppable. All the more important, then, that occupational safety and health keep pace with technological development.

Parallel to the digital transformation, the European Commission is increasingly focusing on boosting competitiveness through deregulation. A central tool in this regard is the so-called omnibus proposals, which bundle various legislative amendments to streamline administration and make the single market more efficient. Optimisation proposals concern areas such as sustainability, agriculture, defence, and increasingly topics of digital and chemical regulation.

But not every rule is a burden. In the pursuit of efficiency, occupational safety requirements must not be viewed as mere bureaucratic obstacles. EU directives on safety and health at work have provided reliable standards across Europe for all sectors and forms of work for more than 30 years. They not only protect employees, but also form a foundation for productivity, innovative capacity, and healthy labour markets.

Strong occupational safety systems provide a competitive advantage, particularly in times of accelerated transformation. Healthy working conditions reduce absenteeism, lower turnover, strengthen motivation, and at the same time relieve social security systems. Investments in good, safe work pay off for the economy as a whole.

Deregulation must therefore not mean lowering protection standards. Small and medium-sized enterprises in particular benefit from clear, comprehensible, and practical rules, not from uncertainty or gaps. Increasingly, voices in the European Parliament are pointing out that the focus on reducing bureaucracy must not come at the expense of workers’ rights. The occupational safety and health system of the future must therefore deliver both: provide reliability and remain open to change. Only then is Europe truly ready for the future.