Investing in prevention in the workplace: an experimental survey for the analysis of return of prevention in Italy in the construction sector

Activities aimed at the prevention and reduction of work-related accidents can, if implemented, be effective in improving the Health and Safety of Workers (OSH) as an investment for companies. A systemic approach to OSH management can reduce occupational accidents and diseases and support the competitiveness of companies. Assessing the effects of OSH investments can be very complex; as heterogeneous factors often have an indirect impact on the productivity of the work process, in par-ticular the construction process, (the construction sector in Italy has the highest incidence rate of fatal accidents among all sectors). With the aim of assessing employers’ perceptions of OSH prevention investments in German companies operating in different sectors, the Istitut Arbei und Gesundheit der Deutschen Gesetzichen Unfallver-sicherung (BGAG) proposed in 2009 an evaluation tool based on a cost-benefit approach summarized by the Return of Prevention (ROP). In 2010, the International Social Security Association (ISSA) supplemented and expanded the BGAG’s experimentation with an international survey in which, in addition to quantitative data, qualitative data are also considered with the same approach. The employers of the companies involved were invited to express (subjectively) through a questionnaire the economic effects (costs and benefits) that investments in OSH in the workplace may have on the company’s balance sheet. The synthetic indicator used (ROP) to define the economic return on investment in prevention is borrowed from the Return of Investment (ROI) which traditionally expresses the profitability index of an investment with a cost-benefit approach. The aim of the paper is to investigate the perception of the effects of prevention investments in Italy in the construction sector in the Province of Rome, with the experimental release of a questionnaire, similar in structure to the ISSA’s survey, but adapted to the Italian context and to the sector in question. The results describe a reality in which investments in prevention are perceived qualitatively as very important, while their effectiveness in terms of return on initial investment is considered less consistent than in the international survey.