Completed project · 2016–2019
Integrating preventive occupational health and safety into initial and advanced training occupations in Industry 4.0
The IntAGt collaborative project was part of the BMBF funding priority ‘Preventive measures for the safe and healthy work of tomorrow’. Its aim was to develop and implement measures to promote healthy skilled work conducive to learning in digitalised industrial production. The project’s starting point was the central thesis that skilled workers, as (co-)designers of their own work, and managers alike need the competence to design work in ways that promote health. Work analyses using an analytical procedure combining methods from occupational psychology and occupational science made it possible to describe the occupational fields of activity of assembly, system operation and maintenance in terms of competence requirements as well as health-promoting and stressful working conditions. On this basis, various learning and teaching concepts aimed at in-company training, vocational schools and advanced training institutions, such as technician schools, were developed, tested and made available.
The digitalisation of the world of work opens up a wide range of opportunities and potentials, but also entails risks and challenges. New jobs may emerge that involve challenging activities at the interface of computer science and mechatronics, bring advantages for (older) employees through physical relief and allow innovative forms of co-determination. On the other hand, a development is conceivable in which digitalisation makes jobs precarious, devalues qualifications and tasks, and ties skilled workers into stressful work processes that hinder learning and are governed solely by what is technologically feasible.
Against this background, the IntAGt project was divided into two overarching project phases:
Deepening the state of occupational-science and work-science knowledge about typical constellations of demands and strains in occupational activities in the context of Industry 4.0, with particular attention to psychological effects
This project phase addressed suitable survey methods for digitalised working conditions, typical constellations of competence requirements, resources and (psychological) strains, and suitable measures and concepts for work design. Specifically, in a first step, work-science and occupational-science work process analyses were carried out at selected Industry 4.0 workplaces of skilled workers in the participating companies. Building on this, measures for company occupational health and safety were developed. In a next step, the company-level results were condensed into typical constellations of demands and strains in digitalised industrial skilled work. The focus was on the occupational fields of activity of assembly, system operation and maintenance.Developing and testing learning/teaching formats for initial and advanced vocational training
This project phase aimed, on the one hand, to promote health-promoting work design competence among apprentices as future skilled workers. On the other hand, inter-company advanced training programmes were included. This approach rests on the assumption that graduates of these programmes (e.g. master craftspeople, technicians or certified business specialists) are often prospective managers who share responsibility for designing the working conditions of skilled workers and apprentices.
In line with these considerations, a particular focus of the collaborative project was on structural (setting-based) prevention: alongside options for behavioural prevention, apprentices and participants in advanced training above all learn about the conceptual foundations of the relationship between work and health and basic aspects of structural prevention.
The learning/teaching formats developed were implemented and tested in the participating schools and companies and are available for download on the project website.
The IntAGt collaborative project was funded by the BMBF under the funding priority ‘Preventive measures for the safe and healthy work of tomorrow’. The consortium of partners from academia, industry and trade unions was coordinated by the ITB.