What Makes a Partnership Work? Lessons from European Experiences

A good idea can solve a problem. But what happens when the people who understand the problem, those who develop solutions and those who can put them into practice rarely work together?
Universities generate knowledge, businesses understand the demands of everyday work, and communities experience challenges that may never appear in a research report. Public institutions, meanwhile, can help turn promising ideas into broader initiatives. Each brings something valuable to the table, but bringing them together is only the beginning.
This question is particularly relevant to FOCUS project, where universities and their partners in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda are working to strengthen occupational safety and health (OSH) education and its connection with workplace realities.
European experiences offer some useful lessons. They show how partnerships can bring professional experience into teaching, involve people directly affected by workplace risks, and develop resources that remain useful beyond individual activities. They also raise an important question: how do we know whether cooperation has actually made a difference?

The Real Partnership Starts When Someone Has a Say

A company logo on a university website tells us little about what the partners actually do together. The relationship becomes more meaningful when industry professionals contribute their experience to teaching, students encounter real workplace challenges, and employers have an opportunity to influence the skills that future graduates develop.

In Slovakia, specialists from IBM, Dell and Siemens shared their professional experience with students during elective university courses in the 2024–2025 academic year. Although these courses did not focus specifically on workplace safety, they illustrate how industry professionals can enrich university education by bringing practical perspectives into the classroom.

The relevance to OSH education is easy to recognise. A student may learn how to identify hazards and assess risks using established methods. Yet workplace decisions are often made under pressure, with limited time, competing priorities and imperfect information. Hearing how an experienced professional handles such situations can help students understand the complexities behind a seemingly straightforward risk assessment.

The RISKMAN project explored this connection through practical risk-assessment exercises, simulations, project-based learning and opportunities to engage with industry professionals. A published study describes the educational activities developed and tested through this cooperation.

Experiences like these suggest that industry involvement can make learning more relevant to professional practice. They also remind us that meaningful cooperation requires opportunities for partners to contribute to educational content and decisions, rather than simply participate in occasional events.

Better Questions Come from Different Perspectives

Consider occupational safety in agriculture. Researchers can identify hazards and recommend preventive measures, but farmers and agricultural workers understand how changing weather conditions, seasonal workloads, limited equipment and economic pressures influence everyday decisions.

Their experience can reveal practical difficulties that may otherwise be overlooked. When these perspectives are included early, they can help shape both the questions being investigated and the solutions being developed.

The European SafeHabitus initiative provides an interesting example. According to its project reporting, it established 11 communities of practice involving more than 1,300 participants and developed resources to support occupational safety and health risk management in agriculture.

What makes this approach particularly relevant is the opportunity for researchers, practitioners and other stakeholders to exchange knowledge about challenges they experience from different positions.

This lesson extends well beyond agriculture. In mining, textiles, manufacturing and other sectors, workers, employers, educators and public authorities may understand the same occupational risk differently. Bringing these perspectives together can improve how problems are defined and how educational activities respond to them.
For universities, this creates an opportunity to connect academic knowledge with the realities of the communities and industries they serve.

Turning Shared Knowledge into Something Useful

Good partnerships create opportunities for people to exchange ideas. Their longer-term value often depends on what happens to those ideas afterwards.

Sometimes cooperation leads to a new teaching method or a revised course. In other cases, it produces educational materials, practical tools or networks that can continue supporting learning and professional development.

In the textile sector, the AddTex project brought educators and industry professionals together to develop online courses and establish four regional innovation hubs. These resources provided opportunities for continued learning and exchange beyond individual project meetings.

Public institutions can contribute another important dimension. Spain’s historical Programa Universitas connected university education on occupational risk prevention with regional authorities and a foundation. EU-OSHA documentation describes the seminars and educational materials developed through this cooperation.

These examples illustrate how different partners can contribute complementary expertise and resources. Universities can provide educational and research capacities, businesses can share practical knowledge, and public institutions can support coordination and broader engagement.

The most appropriate partnership therefore depends on the challenge being addressed. Some problems may be tackled effectively by a university and an employer working together. Others require the involvement of professional associations, community organisations or public authorities.

What matters is that each partner has a meaningful role and that the knowledge generated through cooperation can be put to use.

A Full Calendar Is Not the Same as Progress

While reviewing European experiences, we noticed a recurring gap. Information about project activities was often readily available: courses had been organised, learning materials developed, meetings held and networks established. Much less information was available about what happened afterwards.

This distinction matters.

A successful workshop may bring together enthusiastic participants, but its real educational value becomes clearer when the experience influences future teaching. A newly developed resource may be useful, but its contribution depends on whether educators and professionals continue to use it. A partnership may produce valuable ideas, but those ideas need people willing to take responsibility for putting them into practice.

The European examples discussed here document different forms of cooperation and their immediate outputs. They provide useful insights into partnership approaches, while evidence of longer-term changes in learning and workplace practice remains less clear.

This is an important lesson for future initiatives.

Partners need to agree early on what they hope to achieve and how they will recognise progress. They also need to clarify responsibilities for maintaining educational resources, responding to feedback and continuing cooperation after individual activities have ended.

These arrangements may appear less exciting than launching a new course or organising an international event, but they often determine whether the benefits of cooperation can be sustained.

What Can FOCUS Learn from These Experiences?

For FOCUS, the relevance of these lessons is particularly clear.

Universities and their partners in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda are working in different institutional, economic and professional contexts. Their priorities and available resources may vary, as will the occupational safety and health challenges faced by local industries and communities.

European partnership models can offer useful ideas, but their value for FOCUS will depend on how those ideas are adapted to local needs.

One practical starting point is to involve employers, workers, professional organisations and relevant public institutions in identifying the knowledge and skills that graduates need. Their contributions can help universities develop educational activities that reflect actual workplace conditions.

Industry professionals could contribute to case studies, supervised practical exercises and discussions of emerging occupational risks. Community representatives could help identify challenges that receive insufficient attention in existing educational materials. Researchers and educators could then bring these experiences together with scientific knowledge to develop and improve teaching approaches.

The same principles apply to FOCUS Clubs, FOCUS Fairs and other opportunities for exchange. These activities can provide valuable spaces for meeting, learning and developing relationships. Their contribution will be stronger when participants can influence future activities, responsibilities for follow-up are clear, and feedback is used to improve what happens next.

Importantly, meaningful cooperation also requires continuity. Maintaining contact with partners, updating shared resources and reviewing results should become part of how institutions work together.

The European experiences considered here offer a common lesson: successful partnerships develop through shared knowledge, meaningful participation and continued responsibility for the outcomes of joint work.

For FOCUS, this means building relationships that help universities respond to real occupational safety and health challenges, strengthen education and create opportunities for lasting cooperation.

Perhaps the real question is not how many partnerships we create, but how much we can change through the ones we build.