THE PRODUCTIVITY IMPACT OF WORK ENVIRONMENTAL INVESTMENTS

In order to estimate the economic consequences of work environmental investments for business companies a computer based model was developed by Maurice Oxenburgh in Australia. The model was translated and developed for a Finnish institutional setting by Ahonen and Tuulikki Luopajärvi in 1996. The Finnish version was called Tervus-malli. The Tervus model has been used in several companies to assess the economic feasibility of various work environmental projects. The most acknowledged of them is the so-called Dalbo-project, which was carried through by dr. Ove Näsman and assessed by Ahonen and Näsman in 1995. The Tervus-model was further developed in 1998 together with William Strigård at Miljö-Data in Sweden. The software was completed as a commercial product called Potentialen in 1999. The aim of the present project is to collect the experiences of several Tervus and Potentialen cases in order to develop a general model and handbook for making productivity assessments of work environmental interventions in business companies.