The institution has an adequate and reliable reporting system for occupational accidents and suspected cases of occupational disease.

This is an indispensable tool for data collection and data analysis. It enables the institution to conduct targeted prevention activities based on identified occupational risks and contributes to the evaluation of prevention activities by comparing longitudinal data from interventions.

The institution – if it covers occupational diseases – participates in the development of a national strategy on occupational diseases and the regular updating of the national list of occupational diseases.

The institution cooperates with national and international institutes to share research and development work and establish global research and development networks.

Member organizations of the International Social Security Association (ISSA) that are involved in the management of employment insurance and assistance schemes, either directly or indirectly, comprise a broad and diverse group of social security institutions. In addition to evolving economic, demographic and labour market changes, new and significant challenges are being imposed on many of these organizations.

Continuous training and appropriate guidance are available for workers throughout their careers.

The competent institutions encourage the reintegration of jobseekers through the correct use of both the incentive and disincentive provisions of unemployment benefit programmes.

Promotion and support of an effective return-to-work programme involves a broad range of individual and institutional stakeholders.

This usually includes but is not limited to the injured, ill or disabled person and their family, employer and employee representatives (social partners), colleagues, health-care professionals, community services, interfacing agencies, government departments, and other individually and jurisdictionally specific stakeholders.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity”. An individualized approach to the return to work addresses psychosocial issues related to factors such as motivation, working conditions and personal circumstances.

Those responsible for providing return-to-work services – whether within the institution or in partner and stakeholder organizations – have the requisite knowledge and skills to conform to internationally recognized levels of competence.

These guidelines assist social security institutions to:

The social security institution develops its workplace health promotion activities based on a legal and financial mandate.

The social security institution ensures that the workplace health promotion programme focuses on the health needs of the target population and national health priorities.

The institution recognizes the importance of health promotion campaigns in adding value to workplace health promotion practice.

The valuation methodology is consistent with the social security scheme financing approach and enables the actuarial assessment of its sustainability measures or indicators. The actuary provides an opinion on the appropriateness of the methodology.

The social security institution applies automatic adjustment mechanisms in accordance with the laws and regulations governing the scheme. The social security institution analyses how the application of these adjustment mechanisms affects benefit adequacy and/or the financial sustainability of the scheme.

Automatic adjustment mechanisms link certain decisions on benefits and financing to internal or external parameters or indicators. This guideline should be read together with Guideline 43.

Once risk has been identified and measured, the social security institution makes appropriate decisions regarding the mitigation and treatment of risk.

Actuarial involvement is required when both parametric and structural changes to the social security scheme are considered.

The institution develops partnerships with various organizations for the purpose of reaching potential beneficiaries, reducing administrative costs and increasing service quality and integrity.

The institution defines a strategy on administrative error risk management, evasion of contributions and fraud control for difficult-to-cover groups as part of its overall compliance strategy that gives due consideration to the processes, people (internal and external), data and technology.

Communication for social security administrations requires establishing policies and practices to carry out the wide spectrum of communication-related activities in support of the overall mandate of the institution and of the specific needs of internal units. Such policies and practices aim to guide the institution to:

The communication unit develops a set of indicators to assess the effectiveness of the materials, forms of media and tools that are used to communicate with internal and external stakeholders.

The institution clearly defines its mandate, mission and internal governance mechanism concerning the contribution collection and compliance system, in line with national regulations.

If applicable, the institution participates in defining the governance mechanism for the inter-institutional level through its position on governing committees.

The institution improves its processes of audit and fraud control by using advanced ICT tools and any other available and consistent resource.

Relevant tools include data mining, business rules, multidimensional data analysis and external data (e.g. satellite photography and geographic information systems).

Most mandatory social security programmes are created by legislation, decree or some official act of government, to define the mandate of the institution that is responsible for the implementation of the programme. The mandate often draws a distinction between the “board” and “management”, with the board as the governing and policy-making body of the institution and the management as the body that administers the programme and implements the resolutions of the board.

Open dissemination of key information about the social security institution does not necessarily imply transparency. To be transparent, such information, which is a basic right for stakeholders, members and beneficiaries of the social security scheme, should be timely, reliable, relevant, accurate and objectively verifiable.