ABSTRACT
Higher education institutions have an important role in training future occupational health and safety professionals, including experts in human resource management, to cope with challenges of modern work and employment. Promoting decent work for all, as declared by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 8, is one of these challenges. This chapter will first describe the main findings from a European online survey of leaders of academic training programs, which investigated to what extent and how SDG 8 has been integrated into their curricula, in terms of content, skills, and ethical values. In fact, this integration so far is rather marginal, despite some promising approaches. Strengthening decent work by improved training of occupational health and safety professionals is even more demanding in economically less developed regions such as Africa. To this end, the European survey was extended to a range of higher education institutions in several African regions. The chapter outlines this project and calls for stronger commitment of professionals in occupational life to promote decent work.
