Reduction of occupational injuries as a way to solve the problem of the shortage of personnel to reduce risks in the energy industry

Abstract

Energy security is a priority area of economic development and an important component of the state's national security. Among the internal threats to energy security, experts point to market defects, equipment degradation and backwardness of technologies, imperfect management, personnel problems, and others. One of the reasons for the shortage of qualified personnel is industrial injuries. In the work, a comparative analysis of data for the period from 2015 to 2023 was carried out regarding the level of industrial injuries in various sectors of the economy and the causes of accidents. The fact of a sharp increase in the total number of insurance accidents in 2021–2022 was established only in two sectors - the sphere of health care and the sphere of electricity and gas supply. In other sectors of the economy, the number of industrial injuries decreased compared to 2015. The largest number of accidents with fatal consequences in the energy industry is caused by electrocution of personnel during maintenance and repair of electrical installations. As the conducted studies have shown, in recent years the number of accidents has increased significantly not only due to man-made reasons, which was explained by the corona virus pandemic, but also due to organizational reasons. Among the organizational reasons, violations of labor discipline are in the first places – non-fulfilment of the requirements of labor protection instructions, non-fulfilment of job duties and violation of the technological process. Therefore, the development of proposals for the improvement of the labor protection management system and labor relations in the energy industry is an urgent task. There are proposed measures to reduce the level of injuries due to organizational reasons in stressful conditions of mass absenteeism of personnel due to illness or during hostilities.