Health and Safety Management System and Leadership



“Workplace health protection and promotion enhances the overall well-being of a workforce by more closely integrating health promotion and health protection activities along a continuum. Health promotion interventions contribute dynamically to improved personal safety, in addition to enhancing personal health, while occupational safety interventions contribute dynamically to improved personal health in addition to enhancing personal safety. The two factors, personal health and personal safety—each essential to a productive worker and to a productive workplace– are effectively combined in a symbiotic manner that increases their impact on overall health and productivity. Once health protection and promotion programs are intertwined and deployed strategically to enhance each other, a healthier workforce thus becomes a safer workforce and vice versa” (Hymel et al., 2011, p.695).

Leadership of the organization plays a key role in the process of implementing a health and safety program. All decisions will be based on the organization vision and the goals and objectives that’s been derived in achieving the outcome. 

Implementation of a cohesive Health and Safety program needs to combine both strategies and systems. It is necessary that leadership policies are applied to the activities of individual, organization, occupation, community, and environment that will be applicable, measurable, and integrated across the organization (Ronald & Astrid, 2019).

Health and Safety is a global sustainable development goal, hence continuous improvement and maintenance of satisfactory health and safety management levels is considered important towards the organization’s sustainability (United Nations, 2016).

Dow Jones Sustainability Index is a global sustainability benchmark system, in measuring the economic, social, and environmental impacts of organizational activities worldwide. It is advocated that transparent, public reporting of the DJSIs are important to maintain a sustainable global economy by adopting the best practices (Loeppke et al., 2015).

As explained in Figure 1 below, a wide range of categories would need to be fulfilled in each of the dimensions shown in the DJSI. For example, in order to justify the economic dimension of the DJSI, organizations would need to demonstrate current financial budgets and support towards the health and safety programs, with evidences and details of adequate training provided for employees of the health and safety management systems and satisfactory results on progress (Loeppke et al., 2015).  

Hence it is evident that through proper leadership in an organization, they could reap the outcome by integrating through continual improvements to the health and safety management systems, communicating and creating awareness among employees of the objectives and best practices, following up and evaluating the performances made and rectifying any lapses identified. 

Figure 1- Integrate Health & Safety Index


Source: (Loeppke et al., 2015)


The conventional perception of Health and safety management was that it applies only for production sites, nevertheless in the current business world, health and safety management is considered as comprehensive consideration and an incorporated responsibility of organizational management and highlights the requirement of integrating health and safety to the organizational structure (Griffith and Howarth, 2014).

In many organizations, the leadership concept has disintegrated into involvement in operational improvements. However, it is evident that the leader has to lead by far broader and important style. The perception of Management in general is in the contribution in the areas of strategy implementation, which defines and communicates distinctive positioning of the organization in the corporate world (Harvard Business School, n.d.).

At all organizational levels, Managers role towards the occupational health and safety is considered vital to the development of OHS through planning, leading and managing the organizational health and safety environment (Tappura, Syvänen and Saarela, 2014).


Nature of the Manager’s role includes conflicts at work in employee related and workload related, therefore it is evident that Manager is challenged when handling resources, competencies and skills in a manner that brings out the willingness and voluntary support from the employees, inspire and motivate employees towards accepting OHS objectives, adopt the best practices, to be mindful to reduce at-risk incidents and participation in evaluating the level of success (Tappura et al., 2014).


Video 1 below, from Harvard Business Review explains the importance of happiness at work resulting from tangible and intangible factors. Tangible factors cover areas of pay, benefits, work life balance, and few intangible aspects mentioned been active engagement at work and caring about advancement of organization’s interest. 

Video 1- Where Workers are the Happiest  



Source - (Harvard Business Review, 2017)


It is concluded that employee satisfaction at work, could be inspired and influenced by a successful leader through creating a work environment with better health and safety for employees.


References

Griffith, A. and Howarth, T., (2014) Construction Health and Safety Management.

Harvard Business Review, (2017) Where Workers Are the Happiest. [video] Available at: <https://hbr.org/video/5536560280001/where-workers-are-the-happiest> [Accessed 4 September 2021].

Hendra, S. & Amirudin, R. (2015) Australian journal of basic and applied sciences theoretical review of safety climate in malaysian construction industry. Australian Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences, 9(922), pp.114-122. [online] Available at: <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280240108_Australian_Journal_of_Basic_and_Applied_Sciences_Theoretical_Review_of_Safety_Climate_in_Malaysian_Construction_Industry> [Accessed 4 September 2021].

Hymel, P., Loeppke, R., Baase, C., Burton, W., Hartenbaum, N., Hudson, T., McLellan, R., Mueller, K., Roberts, M., Yarborough, C., Konicki, D. and Larson, P., (2011) Workplace Health Protection and Promotion. Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine, [online] 53(6), pp.695-702. Available at: <https://acoem.org/acoem/media/PracticeResources/Workplace-Health-Protection-and-Promotion.pdf> [Accessed 4 September 2021].

Institute for strategy & competitiveness. The role of leaders - institute for strategy and competitiveness - Harvard Business School. [online] Available at: <https://www.isc.hbs.edu/strategy/Pages/the-role-of-leaders.aspx> [Accessed 4 September 2021].

Loeppke, R.R. et al., 2015. Integrating health and safety in the workplace. Journal of Occupational & Environmental Medicine, 57(5), pp.585–597. 

Ronald, B.J. & Astrid, R.M., (2019), p.17. Increasing occupational health and safety in workplaces: Individual, work. EDWARD ELGAR, pp. 334–349. 

Tappura, S., Syvänen, S. and Saarela, K., (2014) Challenges and Needs for Support in Managing Occupational Health and Safety from Managers’ Viewpoints. Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies, [online] 4(3), pp.31-2. Available at: <http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.875.6542&rep=rep1&type=pdf> [Accessed 4 September 2021].



Comments

  1. Amila WijayanthaSeptember 6, 2021 at 10:15 PM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Amila WijayanthaSeptember 6, 2021 at 10:24 PM

    I agreed with argument. Considering potential effect of organizational leadership are highly influences on safety, psychological well-being, healthy and lifestyle practices behaviors for employees (Mullen and Kelloway, 2011).

    ReplyDelete
  3. Chandana PunchihewaSeptember 7, 2021 at 9:05 AM

    There is a growing understanding that operative leadership, from line managers to senior management, plays an important role in occupational health and safety. Managers must be competent at coaching the staff to innovate and create new ways to work and achieve the Patient safety goals. Proficient managers can motivate and empower staff to constantly achieve better results in Patient safety outcomes (Doody and Doody, 2012).

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jayashi SilvaSeptember 7, 2021 at 10:27 AM

    Totally agreed. According to Cree & Kelloway, 1997, Leaders can model safe or unsafe working procedures with consequences for followers’ willingness to engage in safe work practices.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thushari SenevirathneSeptember 7, 2021 at 10:54 AM

    Agreed, there should be considerable commitment from the management and leadership to make workplace as a safety environment to the employees (Thompson, 1998).safety culture is a part of overall culture of an organization it transparent employee perceptions of management attitudes and behaviors to the safety (Gadd, 2002). According to the Organizing for safety HSE book(1993), the safety culture of an organization indicates its values, attitudes, perceptions and pattern of behaviors of employee and management.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Nuwan Randika WijesingheSeptember 8, 2021 at 7:24 AM

    Agreed. A workplace health and safety management system is a set of policies, procedures and plans that systematically manage health and safety at work and can help to minimize the risk of injury and illness from workplace operations (as cited by Thuan, 2014). 

    ReplyDelete
  7. Khalid HumayuniSeptember 8, 2021 at 12:03 PM

    Agreed. The rise of interest in health and safety measures as indicators of corporate value is gaining traction among thought leaders, who believe a universal system of health and safety metrics reporting could emerge as a new standard of valuation, much as social and environmental sustainability emerged as corporate valuation indicators via the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) in the late 1990s (Loeppke et al., 2015)

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Assessment of Health and Safety Risk at Workplace

Image
Risk assessment is a comprehensive screening of the workplace to identify possible exposures by an organization’s employees to hazards and other risk elements which may have an adverse impact on people, processes, and situations (Government of Canada, 2021).  Assessing the Safety and Health risk will evaluate the risk and consequences of the event that might affect the organizational performance through disruptions in its’ daily activities. An effective program in risk assessment will ensure an effective and swift response towards recovery and eliminate or minimize the impact on the organization ( National Research Council, 2003). Further, organizations could determine the adequacy of the existing control measures and make improvements, if required, and assist organizations in complying with regulatory or legal requirements imposed (Government of Canada, 2021).   The four key elements of a Risk Management Program formed in a Risk Management Plan are;  Risk Identifica...
Read more

Prevention of Work-Related Health & Safety Issues

Image
Safety Climate and Safety Culture Safety climate is the perceived value on the level of safety existing in an organization at a particular time. The attitudes, values, norms, and behaviours of the employees of the organization are key influencers of the inconsistent nature of the safety climate. Safety culture expresses the level of engagement towards safety and the degree to which employees act personally responsible towards the safety of an organization (Queensland Government, 2021). Development in the approach to safety and health of employees  Researches have proven that the approach to the employee safety and health of organizations has evolved over a period of time from reactive approach to proactive approach (Haslam et al., 2016). Adopting a proactive approach towards the safety and health of employees has proven to have benefited the organizations economically, as such management focuses on identifying losses in order to search for new methods of safety culture improvement....
Read more

Review, Evaluate, and Corrective Action

Image
  Review, Evaluate, and Corrective Action  Individuals require a diverse measure for them to assess health and performance, likewise organizations’ health and performance would be assessed via diverse measures (Drucker, 1999). An organization has to mitigate exposures to occupational dangers which is the fundamental of safeguarding employees (Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, 2015) “Performance has to be embedded into the organization and the management; the outcome needs to be measured, or judged -and it has to be continuously improved” (Drucker, 1999). The purpose of reviewing the performance of the Health and Safety system is to identify the risks, analyze the root causes, recognize the action for corrective measures to lessen the impact if reoccurred, and control the risk affecting the organizational safety and health.  Figure 1 below, indicates the Fishbone Model developed by Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), a diagnostic tool used worl...
Read more