Occupational, health and safety situation at small and medium enterprises in Kosovo, contextual factors, barriers, drivers and intervention process

Abstract

AbstractThis survey has been performed as part of a wider survey within the Western Balkan Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SME) Competitiveness Support Project. It presents the current situation of occupational health and safety (OHS) management at 18 SMEs in Kosovo. SMEs in the Republic of Kosovo are facing many difficulties in identifying the real need for interventions, recruiting adequate professional staff to support their activities in OHS. Exposed to an opened market under the regional and international competition, their sustainability has become more difficult and their financial fragility leads very often to the ignorance of OHS issues within their organization.The first objective of this research aimed to understand the OHS contextual factors, barriers and drivers based on the current practice of SMEs in Kosovo. The second objective was to find out if the OHS “ideal intervention process” is applicable to achieve improvements for SMEs in Kosovo. Data collection was expedited through internal documents review, site visits and questionnaires. The statistical data were subject to descriptive analyses and inferential statistics. The findings showed that the contextual factors which influence the intervention process, were of participatory nature, cognitive and physical workplace environment, while the perceived barriers were mainly coming from lack of resources and information. Finally the features of OHS “ideal intervention process” were analyzed and compared for applicability to the SMEs in Kosovo and several interventions in this regards were proposed.