When establishing a model for managing occupational risk prevention, the company has the direct responsibility for its selection and for carrying out the corresponding activities. These prevention functions can be developed based on Royal Decree 39/1997, Regulation of Prevention Services, and according to the four different prevention organization models established by law.
The employer may take on prevention functions (except, of course, those related to health surveillance, which must be handled by a specialized service) if:
This is a strictly voluntary decision; within that freedom, the employer may also limit themselves to certain functions and delegate others. What must be clear is that when the OHS Law allows the employer to assume certain preventive functions, it does not exempt them from fulfilling related obligations. In other words, the preventive structure and activity must be effectively implemented within the company, even if only minimally.
The employer may also delegate preventive actions to one or more company employees. In this case, the designated employee(s) must:
The transition of an employee to a prevention officer — acquiring rights, obligations, and duties not designed by the employer but by the law itself — depends on one fact: that they have been appointed by the employer to carry out prevention activities.
Both the appointment and the termination of a prevention officer’s functions are freely decided by the employer. The appointment is indefinite unless otherwise specified in advance.
Their duties have a dual nature: they act as advisors to the employer and also play an executive role, largely responsible for implementing or verifying appropriate preventive measures.
In cases where the employer cannot organize adequate means to fulfill prevention obligations, the law provides for the existence of specialized entities, independent from companies, dedicated to prevention-related activities.
In this way, the employer can enter into an agreement with an External Prevention Service (external to the company), either fully or partially, depending on which preventive activities cannot be developed internally.
The employer may contract an External Prevention Service if the company has between 1 and 500 employees and if the service includes the four OHS specializations among its offerings (Safety, Industrial Hygiene, Ergonomics and Psychosociology, and Occupational Medicine).
The External Prevention Service is “the set of human and material resources necessary to carry out preventive tasks to ensure adequate protection of workers’ safety and health, advising and assisting the employer, workers, their representatives, and specialized representative bodies.”
The In-House Prevention Service is the most comprehensive internal organizational model for occupational risk prevention. It should be noted that some preventive activities may still be contracted with an External Prevention Service.
Legally, an In-House Prevention Service is defined as “the set of human and material resources necessary to perform preventive tasks to ensure adequate protection of workers’ safety and health, advising and assisting the employer, workers, and their representatives, and specialized representative bodies.”
Members of the In-House Prevention Service have an exclusive obligation in their functions and belong to the company’s internal structure — that is, they are part of the workforce.
Regarding its establishment, the employer is required to create an In-House Prevention Service in the following cases:
The In-House Prevention Service must be a specific organization created by the employer to fulfill occupational risk prevention objectives, thus having executive, advisory, and assistance functions. These functions target both the company and its workers. It can be said that the functions performed by the In-House Prevention Service are the same as those of an External Prevention Service.
There is a final form of prevention management, considered a variant of the previous one, the In-House Prevention Service. This is the creation of a Joint Prevention Service. This can occur when several companies within the same economic sector or geographic area jointly establish a Prevention Service dedicated exclusively to managing prevention for the participating companies.
The law allows the joint establishment by several employers of shared prevention services. These services, whether or not they have separate legal personality, will be considered internal services of the companies that create them and must meet the same requirements as those, with the same applicable obligations. These Services must keep in mind that their preventive activity is limited to the participating companies.
The law establishes that Joint Prevention Services may be created among companies that simultaneously carry out activities in the same workplace, building, or shopping center.
They can also be established through collective bargaining or by mutual agreement among the companies involved. Likewise, Joint Prevention Services may be created among companies belonging to the same production sector or corporate group, or those operating in the same industrial estate or defined geographical area.
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