New forms of work

In addition to traditional employment relationships, a number of new forms of work are emerging, including atypical forms of work. These include microtasking, crowd working and coworking spaces.

Microtasking and crowd working are forms where companies recruit workers via a virtual network, sometimes worldwide. Employee sharing is also a new form of work where employees are jointly employed by several companies. The initiative paper ‘New Forms of Work – New Forms of Prevention’ provides information on new forms of employment resulting from digitalisation and the consequences for prevention.

Coworking spaces are rented by various types of workers such as start-up entrepreneurs and self-employed people without employees, as well as employees. Unlike other forms of mobile work, coworking spaces offer workers not only a space to work with a technical infrastructure, but also the opportunity for personal exchange and networking. The ‘New Forms of Work’ Expert Group of the ‘Occupational Health and Safety Organization’ Expert Committee is running a project to investigate people’s perceptions of coworking; the aim is to work out what needs to be done to create healthy working conditions in coworking spaces and which prevention approaches are needed.