20. Feb 2018
Pursuant to Article 9 paragraph 10 and Article 10 paragraph 7 of the Law on inspection supervision (“Official Gazette of the RS”, number 36/2015), Minister for labor, employment, veteran and social issues adopted the Rulebook on special elements of risk assessment, frequency of performing inspection supervision on the basis of risk assessment and special elements of the inspection supervision plan in the field of labor relations and occupational safety and health (“Off. Gazette of the RS”, no. 117/2017) (hereinafter: the Rulebook). The Rulebook entered into force on 4 January 2018.
The purpose of the adoption of the Rulebook is to provide specific guidelines and criteria for determining the degree of risk in the field of occupational safety and health, as well as to determine the intervals in which the mentioned control shall be performed.
The subject matter of the Rulebook consists of: 1. specific elements of risk assessment, 2. frequency of inspection supervision performance with the employer based on risk assessment and 3. special elements of inspection supervision plan in the field of labor relations and occupational safety and health.
Special criteria for risk assessment
The Rulebook defines the severity of damaging consequences and the probability of damaging consequences as the specific criteria of risk assessment by determining certain ranges for both criteria, which are reduced to numerical values in the range from 1 to 5 for the purpose of easier estimation. Therefore, such risk assessment is expressed in the following way:
5 – critical,
4 – high,
3 – moderate,
2 – low,
1 – insignificant.
When it comes to newly established employers (the employers who have been established and started performing activities in the past year), as well as with employers to whom no inspection supervision had been performed in the previous period, the Rulebook establishes the assumption of the moderate degree of risk.
Direct risk assessment
When it comes to direct risk assessment, the Rulebook envisages it as follows:
i. If with the employer occurred: 1. fatal injury at work, 2. serious injury at work with fatal outcome, 3. collective injury at work within which the employee has suffered a death injury at work or a serious injury at work with a fatal outcome – the degree of critical risk is determined with the employer.
ii. If a serious injury at work occurred with the employer – a high degree of risk is determined with the employer.
iii. If it was determined that one or more persons is involved in factual work with the employer, as well as when a person under age of 15 performs work with the employer – the critical degree of risk is determined with the employer.
Frequency of performing inspection supervision based on risk assessment
The frequency of the performance of inspection supervision is determined based on the assessment of the degree of risk with the employer, therefore taking into account the degree of risk the inspection supervision is performed in the following intervals:
1. In case of an employer who has been assessed as a critical or high risk in the area of labor relations and occupational safety and health – the inspection supervision shall be carried out at least once every six months.
2. In case of an employer who assesses the moderate risk in the area of labor relations and occupational safety and health – inspection supervision shall be performed at least once a year.
3. In case of an employer who has been assessed with a low or insignificant risk in the area of labor relations and occupational safety and health – the inspection supervision shall be performed at least once every two years.
The purpose of the inspection supervision is to reduce the estimated degree of risk, i.e. to put it under control or in the state of low or insignificant risk.
For the purpose of easier visualization, the Rulebook also defines a tabular presentation of all the special criteria for risk assessment.