Assessment of occupational health and safety performance evaluation tools: State of the art and challenges for small and medium-sized enterprises

Abstract Occupational health and safety (OHS) is poorer in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) than in large corporations. Fatal accidents are up to eight times more frequent in SMEs and non-fatal injuries are as much as 50% more likely to occur. In order to improve the OHS status of SMEs, the constraints under which these businesses operate must be taken into account. In this critical review of the literature, we present an overview of research and industrial practices relating to OHS performance evaluation, and therefore of the information-gathering tools developed or adapted for this purpose, with emphasis on the SME context. The goal of this work is to identify avenues of research that are likely to yield practical means of meeting the challenge of integrating OHS into SME culture. Our principal conclusion is that the particularities of the SME context have not attracted the attention of any significant number of researchers in the subject area of OHS. The development of tools that offer a broader choice of performance indicators to OHS specialists intervening in SME settings would contribute significantly to improving accident prevention in the workplace.