Digitalization of the Occupational Health and Safety System

This paper explores how digitalization is transforming occupational health and safety, with particular attention to artificial intelligence, smart monitoring systems, robotics, wearable technologies, and remote work. It argues that digital tools can strengthen prevention, improve risk assessment, support training, and make safety management more efficient. At the same time, it highlights that digital transformation also introduces new legal, ethical, organizational, and psychosocial risks that must be carefully managed if technology is to support decent and safe work.

 Summary

The study concludes that digitalization has the potential to significantly improve occupational health and safety systems.

Technologies such as artificial intelligence, robotics, wearable devices, smart monitoring systems, and virtual or augmented reality can help organizations identify hazards earlier, improve training, automate routine tasks, and strengthen overall workplace safety management.

However, the paper also stresses that digitalization is not automatically beneficial. Without proper safeguards, it can lead to excessive surveillance, misuse of personal data, algorithmic bias, loss of worker autonomy, blurred work life boundaries, and new psychosocial risks.

The report’s major finding is that digital technologies can shift occupational health and safety from a reactive approach to a more predictive and preventive model. AI can support workplace risk assessment, audit analysis, accident investigation, document development, task planning, and training design. Smart systems can monitor hazardous environments in real time, while wearable devices can detect unsafe posture, movement, or toxic exposures. In sectors such as healthcare, robotics can also reduce infection risks and radiation exposure, easing the burden on workers in high risk environments.

A particularly important insight is that these benefits depend on governance and human oversight. The author emphasizes that AI systems must remain under human control and that responsibility for labour rights violations must always lie with a natural or legal person rather than the technology itself. This is especially important where algorithmic decision making affects work allocation, productivity monitoring, or employee evaluation.

Overall, the paper argues that digital transformation is reshaping work organization and occupational health and safety at the same time. Automation, smart tools, remote work systems, and algorithmic management are creating new opportunities for prevention, but they also require stronger regulation, social dialogue, and labour-rights protections to ensure that technological progress leads to safer and fairer work.

Aim & Context

The study examined how the right to safe and healthy working conditions can be ensured in the context of digitalization.

It was developed against the background of major changes in labour law, work organization, and technological development, including the growing role of AI and digital systems in employment.

The paper also places the discussion within the framework of international labour standards, particularly the ILO’s recognition of occupational safety and health as a fundamental principle and right at work, and the continuing relevance of Conventions No. 155 and No. 187.

Methodology

The article is a legal and conceptual review rather than an empirical field study.

It draws on international labour standards, legal scholarship, reports from the International Labour Organization, OECD, EU-OSHA, WHO, and other institutional sources, alongside recent studies on AI, workplace monitoring, robotics, remote work, and smart safety systems.

The analysis focuses on how digitalization affects labour rights and occupational safety and health, and on what legal and policy responses are needed to balance technological innovation with worker protection.

Key Findings

1. AI can strengthen OHS management

The paper identifies many practical OHS applications for artificial intelligence.

These include workplace risk assessment, preparation of training materials, testing of legal knowledge, analysis of audits, development of internal documents, investigation of accidents and incidents, planning of preventive measures, and prioritization of the work of safety specialists.

 2. Smart technologies improve hazard detection and prevention

Digital tools such as wearable devices, sensors, and smart monitoring systems can improve real-time identification of hazards.

These systems can detect poor posture, unsafe lifting, toxic gas exposure, and other workplace risks before they result in injury or illness.

 3. Robotics can reduce exposure in healthcare and high-risk sectors

In healthcare, robotics can reduce worker exposure to infection, radiation, and physically demanding tasks.

Robots can support diagnostics, disinfection, sanitation, patient transport, and data collection, allowing healthcare professionals to focus more on complex care and less on repetitive or hazardous tasks.

 4. Digitalization introduces new psychosocial and privacy risks

A major concern raised in the paper is the expansion of workplace surveillance.

AI-enabled monitoring of keystrokes, email, webcams, location, and worker behaviour can increase stress, reduce job satisfaction, weaken trust, and blur the boundary between work and private life, especially in remote work settings.

 5. Remote work creates new OHS responsibilities and challenges

The paper notes that employers may find it harder to assess and manage risks in remote work environments.

Poor ergonomics, environmental hazards, and inadequate safety arrangements may go unnoticed, while in some legal systems workers carry greater personal responsibility for ensuring safety in their remote workspace.

 6. Human control and accountability remain essential

The author strongly argues that AI must remain under human oversight.

Even where AI systems act autonomously, accountability for decisions affecting labour rights and occupational safety must remain with identifiable people or organizations.

 7. Social dialogue is crucial for fair digital transformation

The paper emphasizes that governments, employers, and workers must work together to manage digitalization fairly.

Only through social dialogue can societies address the complex implications of AI and digital work while ensuring that technological innovation supports decent work rather than undermining it.

Takeaways for Practice

• Organizations should use digital technologies as tools to strengthen prevention, training, and monitoring, not as substitutes for human judgment and accountability.
• AI and digital systems can improve safety outcomes when they are introduced transparently, supported by worker training, and accompanied by clear safeguards on privacy, fairness, and data use.
• Employers should be cautious about overreliance on smart systems, since workers must understand the limitations of these tools and avoid assuming that automated systems eliminate all risk.
• Policymakers and labour institutions should update regulation to address surveillance, algorithmic bias, transparency, the right to explanation, and worker autonomy in human-machine interactions.
• The study makes clear that digitalization can be a major opportunity for occupational health and safety, but only if technological change is guided by labour rights, ethical governance, and strong participation by social partners.

Read the full research study here:

 Lagutina, I. (2025). Digitalization of the occupational health and safety system. https://doi.org/10.61345/1339-7915.2025.4.10