The Economics of Health, Safety and Well-being

Barefoot Economics: Assessing the economic value of developing an healthy work environment

The objective of this publication is to provide a practical evaluation tool to entrepreneurs and all those actively involved in the decision making within enterprises, to meet this challenge by creating healthier and more productive workplaces. An attempt to present practical tools of a different type is given in this publication.

The purpose of economic activity is to increase the well-being of individuals and enterprises in the same way. This is a fact that we sometimes forget when we are talking about work environment development. A traditional approach where improving health and safety at the workplace is seen as an additional cost has slowly been replaced with an approach where workers’ health, safety and wellbeing become integral parts of the economic sustainability and organisational development of enterprises.

By linking health and safety issues with managerial and developmental issues, a growing number of successful enterprises show that it is possible to develop the work environment combining workers well-being and company profitability in balanced way.

The objective of Barefoot Economics is to provide a practical evaluation tool to entrepreneurs and all those actively involved in the decision making within enterprises, to meet this challenge by creating healthier and more productive workplaces. An attempt to present practical tools of a different type is given in this publication.

This publication has been drawn up by the Department for Occupational Safety and Health of the Finnish Ministry of Social Affairs and Health with ILO Safework Programme in cooperation with international group of experts. The expert group have made valuable comments on the publication in the different stages of the drafting. The list of the persons involved in the work can be found at the end of the book.