Employers must provide safe and healthy working conditions for their workers. Making a Risk Inventory and Evaluation (RI&E) contributes to this and is, therefore, required by law. To ensure the quality of RI&Es, they have to be validated in certain cases. Validation is performed by an occupational health and safety service or a certified specialist health and safety expert, also called health and safety expert or key experts.
There are 4 different working conditions key experts, each with their own specialist expertise:
- certified labour and organisation expert
- certified occupational hygienist
- certified higher safety expert
- registered company doctor
RI&E validation
A working conditions key expert verifies whether the company has identified all workplace hazards and is taking the right measures to reduce or eliminate them. The working conditions key expert draws up a validation and advisory report for the employer so that the employer knows whether the RI&E and the associated action plan meet the legal requirements. Since 2022, working conditions key experts may only review RI&Es in the area for which they are certified; the so-called scope of their certification (Dutch).
Joint responsibility
Different parties are involved in the certification of working conditions key experts, the validation of RI&Es and supervision of the proper functioning of certificates, each with their own responsibilities:
- In certain cases, the employer is responsible for having the RI&E reviewed by a certified working conditions key expert or occupational health and safety service.
- The certified specialist health and safety expert verifies whether the RI&E and the associated action plan are complete and reliable. In doing so, they review whether the risk assessment methods used and the measures listed are based on current knowledge.
- Working conditions key experts are certified by a certification body (CB). The certification body is responsible for the actions of its certificate holders and will intervene if a working conditions key expert does not comply with the requirements of the certificate.
- The Accreditation Council assesses whether certification bodies comply with the accreditation standard for personal certification.
- Certification bodies are designated by the Minister of Social Affairs and Employment.
- The scheme administrator ensures that the certification scheme is up to date. This scheme sets out the conditions for obtaining and maintaining a certificate. The scheme administrator also represents the parties with an interest in making the certificate work in practice, such as workers, employers and certification bodies.
- The Netherlands Labour Authority monitors the proper functioning of the system by which labour and organisation experts, occupational hygienists and higher working conditions key experts are certified. It also checks whether certified working conditions key experts comply with the certification requirements set and whether certification bodies carry out their certification and supervision tasks independently and according to set rules. This is with the aim of ensuring that certified working conditions key experts work effectively and in accordance with current legislation.
- The Health and Youth Care Inspectorate supervises registration of company doctors in the BIG register of healthcare professionals.
Risks, approach and impact
Curious about what risks the Netherlands Labour Authority sees, how these are to be approached and their impact? Take a look at the Working conditions key experts: risks, approach and impact page.