Labor inspectorates’ efficiency and effectiveness assessment as a learning path to improve work-related accident prevention

Labor inspectorates, by monitoring and enforcing labor legislation, giving information and technical advice to employers and employees, promoting awareness-raising campaigns and implementing occupational risk prevention policies, play a fundamental role in promoting safer and healthier working conditions and, ultimately, in reducing the number of work-related accidents. Even so, every year, hundreds of thousands of people die from accidents at work and around 2 million die from occupational diseases, highlighting that considerable room for improvement remains. The identification and sharing of best practices in labor inspection can be a useful first step in this direction. The main purpose of this research is to propose Data Envelopment Analysis as a suitable technique for assessing the performance of labor inspectorates and identifying best practices. The potential of the proposed methodology is tested by using it to assess the efficiency and the effectiveness of the 32 local branches of the Portuguese Authority for Working Conditions, a key player of the Portuguese system of occupational risk prevention, and by exploring its value in identifying best practices and possible paths for performance improvement.