Reykjavík City Safety Week 2026
Reykjavík City’s annual Safety Week was held recently and culminated in the formal launch of a new incident reporting system. This marks the third consecutive year the City has organized this campaign, focusing on ensuring the safety and welfare of staff and service users so everyone gets home safely at the end of the day.
The Safety Week schedule, which ran Jan. 26-30, reflected the wide range of jobs City employees hold. A conference was held for safety guards and safety representatives where workplace safety experts delivered various presentations on workplace safety and health, with an emphasis on incident reporting. Chief Executive Officer Þorsteinn Gunnarsson opened the conference, bringing extensive experience in improving workplace safety standards within the state and municipalities.
Training, lectures, and classes were also offered across specialized departments, tailored to each department's work environment priorities. These included classes in first aid, child injury prevention, and building evacuation. There were also lectures on safe interview practices, stress-reduction techniques for frontline staff, and professional communication, along with various other events.
New incident reporting system
The week's highlight was the formal launch of a new incident reporting system. The system, called ASKUR, aims to improve staff and service user safety and gives the City the opportunity to address minor incidents before they become more serious.
ASKUR collects key information to allow the City to learn from incidents, make improvements, and thereby prevent further incidents or accidents. The initiative emphasizes recording all incidents involving staff as well as those involving service users—for example, pool guests, students, residents receiving home care services, and others.
"This is a major step forward in our ongoing efforts to improve workplace safety," says Ásta Bjarnadóttir, director of staff development and work environment at Reykjavík City. "It helps make Reykjavík a safer place to work and live—because if issues aren’t being documented, we won’t know what needs to be fixed."
From a conference during Safety Week.