764 workplace deaths in 2024. 318 more on the commute to and from work. These figures, published in the new 2026-2030 Occupational Health Plan, are not going down — despite procedures, safety posters, and mandatory training.
One detail stands out for the C2D Prévention teams working in the field: severe accidents affect two completely opposite profiles, for opposite reasons. Among workers under 25, 59% of fatal work accidents occur within the first year on the job. Among the most experienced, it’s the reverse: repetition of a gesture eventually erases the awareness of danger.
This isn’t a matter of discipline or motivation. It’s a matter of brain function. And this is precisely the ground on which occupational risk prevention must now be played.
Two profiles, one shared blind spot: what the 2026-2030 Occupational Health Plan reveals
The new Occupational Health Plan, presented on June 5, 2026, sets the national prevention priorities for the next five years. It explicitly places young workers and temporary staff among its priority groups, due to their overexposure to severe and fatal accidents.
But reducing the problem to a lack of initial training would be a mistake. The same plan also points to the need to better detect situations of vulnerability and to embed lasting primary prevention, not just reactive measures. Field data shows that risk does not decrease linearly with experience:
- New recruits put themselves at risk through unfamiliarity: they haven’t yet internalized the warning signs specific to their role
- Experienced employees put themselves at risk through excessive familiarity: a gesture repeated thousands of times stops being perceived as risky
- In both cases, a written procedure isn’t enough, because it addresses an operator who doesn’t exist in reality
It’s this cognitive reality, more than the regulatory one, that C2D Prévention’s CAP Method seeks to build into any prevention approach from the outset.
The ideal brain doesn't exist: what applied neuroscience tells us
Every safety procedure rests on an implicit assumption: a brain that stays continuously alert, never tires, and never automates anything. Applied neuroscience shows exactly the opposite.
Automation, a survival mechanism that works against safety
The human brain is designed to conserve cognitive energy. Faced with a repeated gesture, it gradually shifts from controlled mode — attentive, slow, resource-intensive — to automatic mode — fast, efficient, but blind to weak signals.
This shift isn’t a conscious choice. It explains why an operator who has performed the same task for ten years no longer “sees” the associated risk, even though they know it perfectly well in theory. Habit has replaced vigilance.
Unfamiliarity, a different but equally dangerous blind spot
Conversely, a young employee still has all their conscious alertness, but lacks the library of signals that only experience can build. They don’t yet know how to recognize that an unusual noise, a smell, or a posture often precedes an incident.
Both profiles therefore suffer from the same structural flaw in traditional prevention systems: they treat risk as information to be transmitted, when it’s actually a behavior to be embedded over time, differently depending on seniority.
What ignoring it costs
The consequences of this blind spot aren’t limited to national statistics. In industrial and service organizations, they translate into very concrete costs.
A serious accident involving a newly hired employee generates a direct cost (leave, replacement, investigation) but also an employer reputation cost, particularly sensitive in professions already struggling to recruit. An accident involving an experienced employee, often perceived by management as “unpredictable,” actually reveals a routine that hasn’t been questioned for years — and therefore a risk that remained invisible in the workplace risk assessment document.
In both cases, the organization discovers the problem after the accident, even though the warning signs were present beforehand:
- A standardized onboarding process, identical for all profiles, with no differentiation based on experience
- Procedures that are never revisited, including for gestures “we’ve always done this way”
- Managers trained to enforce rules, but not to spot a drop in vigilance linked to fatigue or automation
- Accident data analyzed in bulk, with no distinction between junior and senior profiles
Want to know if your organization has these blind spots? C2D Prévention conducts an on-site assessment that precisely distinguishes risks by profile and seniority.
The C2D approach: building prevention around the real brain
Given this, the challenge isn’t to add yet another training session, but to rebuild the prevention approach around how the brain actually functions, rather than around a theoretical, perfectly alert operator.
C2D Prévention’s CAP Method draws on applied neuroscience to act differently depending on the profile:
- For new hires and temporary workers, enhanced support during the first few months, the period when unfamiliarity with risk is at its highest — directly in line with the priority set by the 2026-2030 Occupational Health Plan
- For experienced employees, vigilance-reactivation workshops (Think Before You Act / LMRA), which challenge automated gestures without stigmatizing them
- For frontline managers, coaching focused on detecting weak signals: fatigue, rushing, procedural drift
- An on-site assessment that documents the real gaps between written procedure and the gesture actually performed, often invisible in standard audits
Discover how C2D’s CAP Method can embed a lasting safety culture in your teams, tailored to each experience profile.
How C2D supports your organization in practice
Support begins with a diagnostic that combines three sources: the company’s accident data, direct observation of behavior in the field, and interviews with teams — both junior and senior.
This phase often reveals gaps that standard indicators don’t show. A role considered “safe” because it hasn’t generated a recent accident may actually carry a high automation risk, simply because no one has questioned the gesture in years.
Next comes the rollout of Safety Day workshops, designed to re-sharpen risk perception among experienced profiles, alongside enhanced support for new arrivals during their first year — a period identified as critical both by C2D’s field data and by the 2026-2030 Occupational Health Plan.
C2D’s multidisciplinary team — coaches, trainers, applied neuroscience experts, labor law specialists — helps embed this approach over the long term, with tracking indicators differentiated by seniority rather than a single overall metric.
What actually changes on the ground
In organizations supported by C2D, differentiating prevention levers by seniority produces measurable effects. New hires benefit from a more structured onboarding process, which reduces their exposure during the most critical period. Experienced employees, for their part, gradually recognize gestures they had stopped questioning — often triggering a collective awareness effect within the team.
Managers, trained to spot weak signals rather than simply enforce compliance, become active drivers of day-to-day prevention. This shift — from control toward understanding behavior — is exactly what the 2026-2030 Occupational Health Plan also aims for in its primary-prevention logic.
Conclusion
The figures from the 2026-2030 Occupational Health Plan leave no ambiguity: occupational risk prevention can no longer be built solely around procedures designed for an ideal operator. It must account for the reality of the human brain — its blind spots among novices, its automatisms among experts.
In your organization, which gestures are done “the way they’ve always been done” — and that no one questions anymore? That’s often where the next incident is hiding.
Want to identify the blind spots in your safety culture, based on your teams’ experience levels? Contact C2D Prévention for a personalized on-site assessment.
Key Takeaways
- The 2026-2030 Occupational Health Plan, published on June 5, 2026, merges for the first time with the Plan for the Prevention of Severe and Fatal Workplace Accidents (PATGM)
- In 2024, France recorded 764 deaths linked to workplace accidents and 318 deaths linked to commuting accidents
- 59% of workers under 25 who died at work had less than one year of seniority: the risk among novices stems from unfamiliarity
- Among experienced employees, the risk stems from gesture automation: repetition erases the perception of danger
- A written safety procedure addresses a theoretical, always-alert operator who doesn’t exist in the real world
- C2D Prévention’s CAP Method adapts support to each profile: enhanced onboarding for new arrivals, vigilance-reactivation workshops for the most experienced
- Effective prevention isn’t limited to the mandatory risk assessment document or required training — it must question the gestures “we’ve always done this way”
FAQ
What exactly is the 2026-2030 Occupational Health Plan? It’s the fifth edition of France’s national Occupational Health Plan, the national roadmap for occupational risk prevention, published on June 5, 2026 for the 2026-2030 period. The major novelty: it now incorporates the Plan for the Prevention of Severe and Fatal Workplace Accidents (PATGM), previously a separate initiative.
Why are young employees more exposed to severe accidents? Because they haven’t yet built the library of warning signals that only experience can provide. They don’t always spot in time a noise, a posture, or a situation that often precedes an incident. Data from France’s national health insurance body shows that more than half of workers under 25 who died at work in 2024 had less than one year of seniority.
Can an experienced employee really be at greater risk than a beginner? Yes, for certain specific gestures. Repeating a task causes the brain to shift into automatic mode — more efficient in terms of attention, but also less alert to danger signals. The gesture remains technically mastered, but the perception of risk fades over time.
How can these blind spots be detected before an accident happens? An on-site assessment, based on real observation of work situations rather than self-reported data alone, helps identify the gaps between written procedure and the gesture actually performed. This is the first step of the CAP Method offered by C2D Prévention.
Is the mandatory risk assessment document (DUERP) enough to meet the requirements of the 2026-2030 Occupational Health Plan? No. The document remains the regulatory baseline, but the 2026-2030 Occupational Health Plan pushes companies to go beyond a purely documentary approach, to verify whether the measures in place actually reduce risk exposure on the ground — particularly during onboarding and for roles involving repetitive gestures.
Where should a company start to adapt its safety culture to these challenges? With a diagnostic differentiated by team seniority, in order to separately identify the needs of new hires and the routines that need to be re-examined among experienced employees. C2D Prévention offers this on-site assessment as the starting point for any support program.
Sources
Assurance Maladie — Risques professionnels, Rapport annuel 2024 : données sur les 764 décès liés aux accidents du travail et les 318 décès liés aux accidents de trajet en 2024
Previssima, « 764 morts au travail en 2024 : un nouveau triste record pour la France » : donnée sur les 59 % de salariés de moins de 25 ans décédés avec moins d’un an d’ancienneté (previssima.fr)
SSTRN, « Lancement du Plan Santé au travail 2026-2030 » et « Accidents du travail et maladies professionnelles : que révèle l’année 2024 ? » (sstrn.fr)
INRS, « Lancement du Plan santé au travail 2026-2030 » (inrs.fr)
Ministère du Travail et des Solidarités — Plan Santé au Travail (PST) 2026-2030, présenté le 5 juin 2026 devant le Conseil national d’orientation des conditions de travail (CNOCT), disponible sur travail-emploi.gouv.fr
Retours d’expérience terrain et diagnostics menés par les équipes C2D Prévention auprès d’entreprises industrielles et de services
To learn more
- CAP Method
- Safety support and coaching — on-site assessment and diagnostics
- Think Before You Act workshop (LMRA)
- All our Safety Day workshops
- How C2D observes and analyzes on-site behavior
- About us
- C2D Prévention Blog
- C2D SMC, C2D Prévention’s complementary collective mental health division