Two services working together
Decree 1338/96 regulates occupational medicine services and occupational hygiene and safety services. They may be internal or external under the applicable framework, but contracting them does not remove prevention from the employer’s responsibilities.
SRT Resolution 905/2015 specifies their functions and joint activities. Service sizing and work content are connected but different questions: recording professional hours does not demonstrate that hazards were assessed or agreed measures were followed through and shown to work.
What equivalent workers means
The decree defines a measure combining production workers with fifty per cent of workers assigned to administrative duties. This base informs certain service requirements; it is not permission to provide administrative employees with a lower level of protection.
Calculation needs a defensible workforce classification. Keep the date, information sources and criteria, and review them when headcount, allocation of duties or the characteristics of the activity change. An old calculation may no longer describe the current establishment accurately.
Different tables address different conditions
The text provides criteria for occupational medicine hours and for hygiene and safety hours. The former are expressed as weekly dedication, whereas the latter table uses monthly hours and categories linked to the activity and its risks.
Do not mix these units or automatically transfer an exemption affecting one service to the other. Absence of a particular professional-presence requirement in a defined situation does not remove other duties concerning health, assessment, training or worker protection.
Check the service actually provided
A preventive review should examine professional qualifications, contracted scope, availability, visits and coordination. Resolution 905/2015 addresses joint activities such as risk mapping and training programmes alongside the functions specific to each discipline.
For example, production growth may require revision of both the equivalent-worker calculation and coverage of new processes. Keeping an old contract without examining the change would leave the actual need unresolved. Use the updated legal text and specific workplace conditions to guide decisions, rather than a table detached from its context and qualifying provisions.
