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Challenges
of tomorrow
W
hen Google’s DeepMind
defeated GoWorld Cham
pion Lee Sedol at the start
of 2016, people were completely
amazed. Headlines quickly circu
lated about the computer’s triumph
and how this would soon replace
human labour. Such forecasts
should be takenwith a grain of salt.
Up until now, technical advance
ments have not made work redun
dant, they have “only” changed
work. However, this change is pro
gressing rapidly. Digitalisation is
not just creating new professions,
it is also allowing work to become
more flexible andmobile. The once
rigid boundary between work and
private life is becoming increas
ingly blurred. New forms of work
are arising such as crowdwork and
clickwork which, at first glance at
least, do not seem to fit in with tra
ditional employment.
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All this raises questions. Our
current understanding of social
security is that an employer takes
on responsibility for his or her em
ployees. This changes with the new
possibilities that technology offers
us. Who is the employer? Who is
the employee? Where is the work
place? These definitions are be
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coming increasingly ambiguous.
We need new approaches to organ
ising accident insurance and occu
pational safety.
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The topic of “Work 4.0” is no
longer just about people working
with robots or about rules for when
it is acceptable to contact employ
ees after hours. Digitalisation re
quires us to further develop our
understanding of prevention and
social security. Automation, for ex
ample, offers enormous potential
to reduce the risk of a workplace
accident or occupational disease.
However, if we want to leverage
this potential, then prevention
must be more firmly anchored in
companies and in people’s minds
than it previously has been.
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We need a culture of prevention
where it is commonplace to ask:
how does a decision or a technol
ogy affect the safety and health of
workers? As such, we have delib
erately chosen to make one of the
focus areas of this yearbook about
the current transformation of the
world of work. We want to pres
ent the challenges that we are fac
ing and what answers the statuto
ry accident insurance already has
for these.
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Dr Walter Eichendorf,
Dr Joachim Breuer and
Petra Zilch
Dr Walter Eichendorf,
Deputy Director General
Petra Zilch,
Deputy Director General
Dr Joachim Breuer,
Director General
Foreword
7
DGUV Yearbook 2015/16