Health, Safety & Wellness Plan for the Workplace


Health, safety, and wellness have become the most discussed topic after the COVID19, which has been in the discussion of every government and organization in the world. during the pre-epidemic era, most of the organizations were focused on safety rather than health, health was only a meaning for compliance audits but never a strategic element nevertheless laws and regulations were in existence even then.


Occupational health and safety are the concern of human wellbeing, in this day, of industrialization and service giving sectors development which is accelerating resulting in workplace health problems booming with Workplace safety and health hazards (Jilcha and Kitaw, 2016).


When developing a safety and health plan, organizations should initially identify where they are now, where do they want to go, how can they get there, and which way is the best and finally how do you ensure arrival, its simple plan model which discusses the analysis, goals and objectives, strategy, evaluation, and control process. 

During the analysis stage, a SWOT analysis on the strengths and weakness which is internal to the organization and opportunities and threats which is external to the organization will give a clear understanding of the current situations to develop a proper health and safety plan at a strategic level (Dyson, 2004).

Figure 1 below, describes the key elements of a SWOT Analysis.


 Source: (Wikipedia, 2021)

Jansen and Brent (2005) in their research journal highlighted and proposed the requirement of an Integrated Safety Management System by combining both the Behaviour-Based Safety programs and the Safety Management systems at organizations. By then organizations have already started using Behaviour-Based Safety Programs, in addition to the Safety Management Systems to address the at-risk behaviors which are not addressed efficiently by the latter. The structure of the Integrated Safety Management System is illustrated in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1 explains the factors such as the organization’s goals, objectives, corporate culture towards safety and health, leader’s values on the need for proper health and safety systems, all of which are integrated into the company policies. Through proper HRM communication, encouragement and involvement of the employees are to be obtained for the success of the proposed Integrated Safety Management System.

Figure 1- Proposed Integrated Safety Management System

    Source: (Jansen and Brent, 2005, p.724)


References

Dyson, R.G., (2004) Strategic development and swot analysis at the university of warwick. 

European Journal of Operational Research, 152(2004), pp.631-640 [online]. Available at http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu. Accessed on 5th September 2021.

Jansen, J.C. and Brent. A.C., (2005) Reducing accidents in mining industry – an integrated approach. The Journal of the South African Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, 105, p.719 [online] Accessed on 5th September 2021.

Jilcha. K. and Kitaw. D., (2016) A literature review on global occupational safety and health practice and accidents severity. International Journal for Quality Research, 10(2), pp.279-310 [online]. Available at https://www.researchgate.net. Accessed on 5th September 2021.

Wikipedia. 2021. SWOT analysis - Wikipedia. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWOT_analysis#/media/File:SWOT_en.svg. [Accessed 06 September 2021.

Comments

  1. Nuwan Randika WijesingheSeptember 8, 2021 at 7:18 AM

    Agreed with your arguments. Further, designing and managing an employee wellness program is an important step in improving the health and productivity of employees and potentially improving the overall cost of employer-provided health care (Chen, 2011)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hemachandra KrishnachandraahSeptember 8, 2021 at 7:47 AM

    Yes, (Fai, 2012) also stated that, important step in improving the health and productivity of employees is designing and managing an employee wellness program Wellness programs can benefit the organization such as, lowering health care costs, reducing absenteeism, achieving higher employee productivity, reducing workers' compensation and disability-related costs, reducing injuries and Improving employee morale and loyalty.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Khalid HumayuniSeptember 8, 2021 at 12:20 PM

    Lately, there’s been some debate about whether workplace health promotion programs, more commonly known as wellness programs, work. To us, it’s similar to asking whether reviews, training programs, employee assistance services, or other company initiatives are effective for both worker performance and the bottom line. The honest answer is that some are successful while others fail. And most of the time this comes down to how they’re designed and executed. (Goetzel, 2016).

    ReplyDelete
  4. GajendranSeptember 9, 2021 at 3:30 AM

    Agreed with your view, in addition One of the greatest reasons for this difficulty comes from the general acceptance that employee wellness programs can produce attitudinal and behavioral benefits (Baicker, Cutler, & Song, 2010). However, it often is hard for companies to monetize the exact benefits that an employee wellness program can provide, and some companies do not even attempt to try it at all (Csiernik, 2011)

    ReplyDelete
  5. manish kumarOctober 5, 2021 at 2:21 AM

    Wonderful blog! To help employees improve their well-being across all dimensions, companies can organize various wellness activity events. Not every solution makes sense for every organization, and some solutions make sense for no organization. We bring Virtual Employee Wellness Programs to guide you on what is available and what is the best-suited solution for employee wellness. This wellness program addresses all dimensions of employee's well-being.

    ReplyDelete

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