Posted By Mr Ed
Strange question but has anyone had any experience of health and safety standards in Germany? Are they the same, better or worse? Do they undertake risk assessments in the same way and to the same level as us?

The reason for my question is that I recently read a comment from a German correspondant in a magazine who said "Compared with Britain, the same EU regulations exist in Germany but they are not as strict in their enforcement. Businesses are not burdened with the same level of health and safety regulations". Just wondered if anyone had experience of working in Germany and could confirm or deny?

The same question equally applies (rather broad I know) to comparisons between the UK and other EU states.

Posted By John Mackessack
Hi Mr Ed,

My experiance is that the German differs fundamentally due to the no-fault liability basis of their insurance or 'worker compensation schemes'. Also, this was the subject of one of my dip2 assignments many moons ago...........

The German scheme is dealt with by the ‘Berufsgenossenschaften’ (BG), which can be described as an ‘institution for statutory accident insurance and prevention for trade and industry’ (also see www.HVBG.de). It also loosely translates as ‘trade association’ and companies pay a premium for this.

The BGs constitute an element of indirect state administration and are public law bodies, with government supervision. The key principle is ‘rehabilitation before pension’ and to this end a ‘curative’ system has been developed to deliver first class medical care.

My personal impression gained from my German counterparts is that although the BG have some powers of enforcement they are rarely used.

I also do not believe that line management feel the heat at all for negligence, as the injured individual generally gets carted off to a very good hospital and in any case the individual has little or no legal recourse for negligence anyway. Hence no compensation culture.

On the down side, the typical overhead to business of paying the BG (insurance company) is typically 1.5 - 2.0% of payroll, which compared to ELCI in the UK for our fault-based system is pretty costly (estimates for ELCI costs in UK vary from 0.23% to 0.9%, depending on who you listen to).

There are many merits for the German system (it was the first of its type in the world - 1884 established by the Imperial Chancellor Otto von Bismarck as part of the development of comprehensive social welfare legislation), but I still have trouble seeing the same motivation for sound risk management principles and to this end, they do not, in my experience really do 'Risk Assessments' as we know them.

I think they have also been taken to task recently by the EU for this....although I can't find the case.

Interestingly, this type of system, which is also common in many EU countries and looks like top-notch employee welfare, is openly disliked by the TUC who prefer our 'perpetrator pays' system, which they feel drives good prevention strategies.

Sorry to ramble on......................

John