What WISE is
WISE is an International Labour Organization methodology for promoting improvements in working conditions in small enterprises. Its materials bring together visual examples and participatory tools that help identify practical workplace changes.
The 2018 global manual is intended for employers and workers in small manufacturing enterprises. It helps facilitate discussion about specific problems and feasible solutions, linking safety, health and productivity without treating protection of people as separate from everyday activity.
What it helps review
WISE materials address materials storage and handling, workstations and tools, machinery safety, the working environment, control of hazardous agents, welfare facilities and work organisation. This breadth helps avoid reducing a visit to a single type of risk.
A checklist guides observation but does not guarantee coverage of every hazard at a site. Particularly complex substances, installations or tasks require the relevant specialist assessment.
Participation and learning between enterprises
The approach encourages people who know the task to propose solutions and share examples that already work. Problems with reaching, lighting or circulation are often easier to understand by observing work than through an abstract description.
Exchange between small enterprises reveals alternatives without assuming that every solution is transferable. Before copying one, check dimensions, materials, loads, exposed people and the requirements of the process concerned. Another organisation’s good practice is a starting point for analysis, not automatic authorisation to implement it.
Hypothetical example
A small assembly business identifies materials accumulating in a passageway and frequent trips to find tools. The team proposes reviewing quantities stored beside the workstation, fitting an accessible holder and marking out a clear route.
Responsibilities and a review date are agreed. The review checks whether the passageway stays available and whether the holder makes work easier for everyone. An improvement that works only during the initial visit needs reconsideration.
Preventive scope and limitations
WISE helps organisations act on improvement opportunities, particularly where resources are limited. Its emphasis on simple measures does not mean choosing only cheap solutions or postponing a necessary control for economic reasons.
The enterprise retains its legal prevention duties. Measures should be integrated into planning, changes communicated and effectiveness checked. The manuals can support training and participation, but do not replace risk assessment, mandatory technical inspections or professional intervention where required.
Explore this approach further in Worker consultation and participation.
