Abstract
Attending to the ever-expanding list of factors impacting work, the workplace, and the workforce will require innovative methods and approaches for occupational safety and health (OSH) research and practice. This paper explores strategic foresight as a tool that can enhance OSH capacity to anticipate, and even shape, the future as it pertains to work. Equal parts science and art, strategic foresight includes the development and analysis of plausible alternative futures as inputs to strategic plans and actions. Here, we review several published foresight approaches and examples of work-related futures scenarios. We also present a working foresight framework tailored for OSH and offer recommendations for next steps to incorporate strategic foresight into research and practice in order to advance worker safety, health, and well-being.
Highlights
occupational safety and health (OSH) professionals more actively anticipate, and even shape, the systems influencing the future of worker safety, health, and well-being
The remaining sections of this paper explore how strategic foresight has been and could be applied to anticipate future challenges and opportunities in OSH that may affect worker safety, health, and well-being
National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has convened a diverse team of subject matter experts from across the OSH discipline to participate in this pilot test of the framework
Summary
Factors affecting worker safety, health, and well-being in advanced industrialized countries like the United States have undergone a fundamental shift. Rapid market shifts and advances in technology have contributed to a dramatic rise in part-time, temporary, contract, on-call, contingent, and ‘gig’ work While these nonstandard work arrangements may increase work-life flexibility, they tend to leave workers at risk by offering fewer protections and comparatively lower rates of pay [8,9,10]. As part of that transformation, an approach for expanding the focus of OSH was proposed in 2019 to more fully consider how traditional job risks and hazards combine with personal, social, and economic factors to affect health and well-being across the working life continuum [5]. OSH professionals more actively anticipate, and even shape, the systems influencing the future of worker safety, health, and well-being
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