In the municipality context, the priorities and financial objectives established by boards of directors (‘boards’) may influence the quality of occupational health and safety (OHS) in organizations. Little is known about boards’ discussions of OHS, which is why we set out to investigate vice chairs’ and chairs’ perceptions of facilitating conditions for discussing OHS in municipal boardrooms. Thirty-four participants from 12 randomly selected municipalities were interviewed, and the data were analyzed using template thematic analysis. The results show that facilitating conditions for board OHS discussions can be linked to the individual, group, and organizational levels and that these interplay. The most prominent finding is the considerable influence that the (vice-)chairs have on whether and how OHS is discussed on the board, both in terms of influencing the psychological safety of its members and how OHS information is gathered. Furthermore, high levels of psychological safety among organizational representatives interacting with the board facilitate the acquisition of candid OHS information from the organization. With the high level of employee risk of long-term sickness absence in municipalities and the challenges of attracting employees, OHS could be considered a strategically important part of boards’ meeting agendas. Our findings suggest that OHS governance in municipality administrations and companies can be individual dependent and that the governance structure is inadequate for ensuring that OHS is discussed at the board level.
Lornudd et al. (Thu,) studied this question.