Occupational Safety and Health Management in Very Small Enterprises: A Scoping Review Protocol

Very small enterprises (VSEs), defined as organizations with 1 to 19 employees, represent 88.4% of Canadian businesses. Despite their economic weight, their occupational safety and health (OSH) practices remain poorly documented, and the literature focuses mainly on larger enterprises. This scoping review aims to identify and map OSH activities in VSEs across OECD countries, including prevention practices, implementation strategies, and organizational factors, in a context where limited material, financial, and human resources often pose challenges for OSH management. Guided by the Arksey and O’Malley framework and the JBI approach, MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO, and Scopus will be systematically searched for English- or French-language publications from 2014 to 2024. The search strategies will be developed by a specialized librarian (BN) and will be described in detail in the supplementary material 1. Records will be independently screened by two reviewers (ergonomists AAS and MP), and data will be extracted by the full research team (AAS, MP, CJ, and JD) using a structured charting form. Extracted information will include study characteristics; OSH topics (e.g., workplace safety, injury or accident prevention, risk assessment, training and information, health promotion); the person responsible (e.g., worker, owner-manager, or external stakeholder); and reported facilitators and barriers to integrating these OSH strategies. Descriptive mapping and thematic synthesis will be conducted, with study management supported by Covidence® and thematic charting supported by NVivo 15®. Findings will be disseminated through submission to the interdisciplinary journal WORK: A Journal of Prevention, Assessment & Rehabilitation and through presentations at scientific and professional events, in support of a broader six-project research program on OSH management in Québec VSEs (Dubé et al., 2024). By highlighting OSH strategies used by VSE owner-managers and workers, this scoping review will support researchers, practitioners, and policy stakeholders seeking feasible, context-sensitive approaches to improve OSH in micro-enterprises and very small businesses.