The role of occupational health and safety professionals in bridging research and practice:

Experiences from translating knowledge about managing stress-related sickness absence within small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)

Abstract

Occupational health and safety (OHS) professionals can help to support knowledge transfer and exchange processes and make OHS knowledge useful for workplace prevention. The objective of this article is to explore the role of OHS professionals in bridging research and practice in the context of small and medium-sized enterprises (SME’s). The article presents the results from an action learning process in which six OHS service providers and six SMEs collaborated to create a method for translating knowledge about managing stress-related sickness absence in the workplace. A qualitative and theory driven research approach was used to analyze and defi ne three domains of competencies for OHS knowledge brokering. Successful OHS knowledge brokering require attention to the relationship between OHS professionals and SME’s. The article concludes that awareness about brokering roles and the ability and skills of OHS professionals to apply brokering competencies during the translation process is key to promoting the use of knowledge to manage stress-related sickness within SME’s.