Managing Work Activities on the Horizon of 2040: Which Challenges for Occupational Safety and Health at Work? A Foresight Study

Faced with technological change, which has accelerated since the early 2000s, and a world that is increasingly unstable, companies are looking for new ways of organizing their activities to make themselves more agile. At the same time, attitudes to work and career paths are changing: people are looking for a better work-life balance and meaningful work. However, their careers are increasingly fragmented. In addition, the fight against climate change imposes the transformation of production systems. These new trends are leading to the emergence of new ways of managing work activities, which will undoubtedly have an impact on OSH. This paper summarizes the foresight study conducted by the Research Institute for Occupational Health and Safety in France (INRS) on the evolution of management methods and their possible consequences in terms of health and safety at work. With a multidisciplinary team, the Institute’s Watch and Foresight unit first explored the main factors of change underway in order to imagine during the second phase company profiles in 2040 based on the design fiction method. The profiles of these fictitious companies and their employees were then analysed by occupational health and safety experts to identify the main challenges and potential opportunities that could emerge in the domain of occupational risk prevention.