OHS in times of digital transformation

The project has grown out of an interest in the professional trajectory and occupational conditions of individuals who perform work via digital platforms or mobile apps that connect customers to service providers. Digital platform work may involve on-demand services, such as transportation or grocery delivery, or the performance of microtasks, which are small components of a final product, e.g. data encryption, photo tagging, polling. Digital platforms organise work for diverse professional groups, ranging from delivery agents, through nannies and handymen, all the way to highly-skilled finance, project management or IT specialists, etc. It is a dynamically growing industry that attracts increasing numbers of service providers. In 2022 alone, an estimated 28.5 million people across the EU provided services via digital platforms or applications. Platform work seems like a good option for those who appreciate flexibility, allowing them to work at a time and place of their choosing. The price of freedom, however, is the risk that comes with the lack of labour protection and social welfare, the need to provide services at bare minimum prices and the lack of effective mechanisms to protect workers against fraud or extortion. Platform work has been largely under the radar of legal regulations, including those related to occupational health and safety (OHS).

Prof. Dorota Merecz-Kot, photo by Michał Łepecki The goal of this project is to investigate how platform work is organised in different EU countries. What are the OHS risks faced by platform workers? How does the platform work environment affect their well-being (mental and physical health)? We want to collect quantitative and qualitative data in order to analyse the similarities and differences between different countries and create a European map of trends in the sharing economy. At the core of the project is a prospective study of platform workers in Poland, Sweden, Spain, Belgium, Denmark, Finland and Great Britain, made up of interviews and online questionnaires.

Our second goal is to promote solutions to support better occupational health and safety of platform workers. To this end, we will study how platform managers perceive OHS conditions and analyse platform features that guarantee a healthy work environment, as well as OHS regulations and platform challenges for employers. We will also survey system-level solutions and good practices adopted in partner countries, define the areas for improvement and set the direction we should follow in order to maintain and strengthen the health potential of European workers in the sharing economy.

The achievement of these goals will generate new insights, which can be used by decision-makers, companies and trade unions to create OHS guidelines for platform work.