A poor working environment can result in negative consequences at the individual, organizational, as well as societal level, for instance as a negative financial consequence. The driving force for many who are working within the occupational safety and health (OSH) field is to achieve improvements in the working environment, but it can be challenging to motivate investments in this area.

It is fairly easy to calculate the direct, visible costs of a poor working environment, but difficult to estimate the hidden costs and the benefits of improvements. This presentation will give examples of visible and hidden effects and types of costs due to a poor working environment and will provide a survey of methods available for estimating financial effects.

The demographic changes societies face lead both to challenges and opportunities. One of the challenges is how to design jobs so that even an ageing population can remain healthy and productive at work. The presentation will also give some examples on the state of the art of what we know in the area of an ageing workforce and where some of the knowledge gaps are that require research and development to meet the two objectives of ergonomics: human well-being and overall system performance.