Towards a robust impact evaluation of technological innovation interventions on occupational safety and health

Health and safety interventions implemented in the past often lacked detailed design and rigorous evaluation of their outcomes. Luckily, in recent years, there has been a gradual rethinking of intervention design and evaluation, leading to higher impactful measures in the field. Although much of the literature has focused on evaluating interventions – a crucial phase that not only monitors the success of a specific intervention but has also the potential to generate knowledge for future interventions to improve their design and implementation – most of it remains theoretical and not applied in reality. Therefore, this study aims to show the potential of introducing a national Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) initiative that assesses the multiple impacts of health and safety in the workplace through the evaluation of different interventions, which are not solely focused on OSH improvement, but also on promoting technological innovation through Industry 4.0 solutions. This initiative is part of a portfolio of research projects funded by the Italian National Institute for Insurance against Accidents at Work (INAIL, i.e., in Italian, ‘Istituto Nazionale Assicurazione Infortuni sul Lavoro’), which continuously subsidizes projects in different disciplines to improve workers’ well-being by increasing the global effectiveness of prevention activities. This study presents the initial stages of the initiative, including an analysis of the surrounding environment and the setting up of main variables according to a Programme Theory logic. The Programme Theory will enable the detection of the mechanisms that produce certain effects on the intervention's development. This perspective will help us understand how the success or failure of interventions is reached by studying the potential mechanisms – beneficial and detrimental – that affected the intervention's outcome.