Giulia La Rocca
Doctoral Projects
Digitalization in Occupational Safety and Health Agencies: Exploring Organizational Change, Innovation, and Current Challenges
The world of work is constantly changing. To ensure safe and humane working conditions in the long term, occupational safety and health systems must be continuously developed and adapted.
Occupational safety and health inspectors play a central role at the interface between workplace-level and institutional occupational safety and health. At the same time, they themselves are particularly affected by the current transformation processes in the world of work, which are increasingly shaping their working conditions.
Initial studies suggest that these changes are associated with increasing work intensity, complex interaction requirements, and new psychosocial stressors. However, there is currently very little in-depth empirical research on the specific challenges, the associated risks, and the strategic and operational approaches to addressing them within occupational safety and health regulatory agencies.
The goal of this doctoral dissertation is therefore to systematically examine the current challenges arising from changes in the world of work and their impact on the working conditions of labor inspectors. The focus is on both the resulting risks for this group of employees and the organizational and practical ways in which these changes are being addressed within labor inspection agencies in various European countries.
The doctoral project is part of the collaborative research project “Behind the Scenes: An Exploratory Analysis of Working Conditions and the Use of Technology in European Occupational Safety and Health Regulatory Agencies” (F2585) conducted by the Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA) and TU Dortmund University.