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The role of occupational health and safety representatives is changing. A study in 60 Danish enterprises indicates that representation, and especially negotiation on behalf of colleagues, has diminished. The work environment is mainstreamed in many enterprises and is rarely an area of conflict. The role of OHS representatives has accordingly changed to focus on solving specific problems in the workplace as an integrated part of daily operations. Both management and colleagues consider the OHS representatives as a resource that can be utilized to manage the work environment. The consequences of this development for the employees may be a stronger joint management–employee effort to improve the work environment, but also management domination and an accordingly weaker employee voice in some companies.

The aim of this article is to study the learning processes that take place in an interactive research project, which involved university researchers as well as ergonomic practitioners. The project simultaneously developed and tested a new framework—designated Workspace Design—for intervention in workplace design processes in companies. The basic idea in Workspace Design was that ergonomists should take a new role and apply new participatory methods when involved as consultants. The course of the project was evaluated by the application of social learning theory. The goal was to find out if and why the ergonomic practitioners had learned to practice the new concept by themselves. The results confirm that learning to some extent took place with help from two different mechanisms: learning by interacting and learning by practicing. Three factors are of crucial importance to the successful transfer of a new framework to ergonomic practitioners: 1) the practitioners must take part in developing and testing the framework and the subsequent interpretation of results, 2) they must have the opportunity to practice the framework in the daily consultancy setting and then reflect on their experiences, and 3) their consultancy organization must be committed to adopt the new framework. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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