Occupational Health and Safety - Case Study Example

Occupational Health and Safety By Student’s name+ ID Code+ course name Professor’s name University name City, State Date Introduction Total quality management is a management philosophy that encompasses dynamic corporate culture. It is customer focussed and follows a systematic approach of continuous organization performance improvement. Further, Total Quality Management (TQM) and Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) are highly integrated to achieve more synergy. On the other hand, occupational health and safety systems are defined as a combination of management organizational arrangements, review and planning, consultative arrangement together with other elements that work to enhance safety, performance and health of employees. Management has got several responsibilities including making the workplace viable and free from risks and hazards. However, the costs arising from accidents occurring in workplace serves to increase the organization costs. There are numerous approaches that a business can apply to enhance security of its workplace while at the same time ensuring that business continue to offer quality services. This paper focuses on occupational health and safety system that is integrated into total quality management. Explain the purpose of OHS TQM system and how it would benefit the expanded business (that is, apply the TQM model/approach to WHS activities). Over the recent past, OHS systems have been on the rise in many workplaces. This is attributed to a number of key factors including the presence of defective systems that expose employees to disasters. In addition, firms seeking to achieve market competitiveness have also embraced OHS systems and principles of total quality management. Notably, OHS resemble total quality management technique, and therefore, TQM could have been the basis under which OHS was established. Nonetheless, OHS systems were established to improve workplace safety consciousness and eliminate hazards. By implementing OHS TQM system, the business is able to minimize and eliminate risks posed to not only employees, but also other interested parties who may be exposed to risks when in the company’s premises or when using its products. In addition, many businesses are required by law to put in place functioning OHS TQM framework and any business that complies gains an upper edge in the industry as proper systems calls for certification by registered external organizations. In this regard, presence of functional OHS systems have the capacity to contribute to business expansion as many consumers prefer to associate themselves with organizations that have proper framework to ensure employees safety. Describe how a risk management process might be built into a business’s OHS employment procedures. Draft an induction form for the new employees and explain how it should be conveyed to those employees. Risk exists in everything we do. In addition, as the environment in which we operate changes, risks also changes, and therefore, effective risk management includes successful means of monitoring such changes. Risk management process seeks to minimize exposure to any occurrence or event with the capacity to cause adverse effects. According to Kogi (2002), the organization must be committed to managing risk to enhance protection of its workplace, business objectives, image and reputation, clients and stakeholders, intellectual property and assets. Nevertheless, it is considered an integral part of success that must be fully integrated to the organizations operating procedures and policies. Business OHS systems are built within the organization’s strategic context. In addition, the management must incorporate risk management in company’s strategic goals to ensure that all probable risks are minimized if not totally eliminated. Incorporation of risk management process within the organization strategic goals will enable the business to identify the probable risks by assessing how such risks can occur. In addition, the company will have the capacity to determine the existing controls and their effectiveness, likelihood of risks and the probable extent of damage that can be caused by identified risks. At this point, the business gets to know all the potential risks, and therefore, prioritizes their control measures depending on the degree of damage to the business. The business will also evaluate the best control methods in preparation for organization wide implementation. Besides OHS TQM approach, describe two other alternative OHS systems that are available for the management of OHS for the organisation to consider. Voluntarist Approach Organization health and safety from the outset has been voluntarist in nature. Notably, it focusses on the employees working conditions including machinery hazards that cause injuries in many workplaces. The ancient factories fenced the machineries and prevented workers from cleaning around moving machinery, which ensured the presence of adequate airspace, ventilation and cleanliness at the workplace. Behavioural and Engineering Legislative approaches The proponents of behavioural and legislative Engineering approaches dismiss the hostile stance towards each other. Behavioural approach emphasize that employees have limited capacity and control to influence factors that contribute to ill-health and injuries at the work place. According to Mearns, Whitaker and Flin (2003), the law seeks to set the minimum safety standards by recognizing that safety lies in work systems rather than behaviours of the employees. However, with difficulties of influencing employee’s behaviours, Gardner (2000), agrees that the solution lies with identifying and controlling hazards at the source. Therefore, the engineering legislative approaches become effective as they promote safeguarding equipments as the initial remedial actions to negate possibilities of injuries. Because your friend considers they know all there is to know about running the business, and they don’t want outsiders interfering, explain the purpose of consultation and describe how new employees might participate in a consultative arrangement to help the business. Consultation is critical in OHS system effectiveness. Basically, consultation is referred in the OHS TQM Act 2000 as sharing of information regarding occupational health and safety by allowing employees an opportunity to contribute and express their views in a timely manner in order to resolve occupational health and safety issues. This is because it coves diverse activities including educating and informing employees on the need to engage in supportive and reliable roles, in participatory OHM system. Employee may get involved in activities such as quality circles and safety inspections all of which are management driven. Undoubtedly, effective communication is critical for employee consultations to be meaningful and achieve proper risk assessment and control. Consultations ensure employees contributions are taken into account by the organization. Consultation should be two-way in order to enable employees contribute to decision making. The new employees may participate in consultative meetings in the following ways: employees joining an organization from other organization could have rich information in risk assessment and control. In addition, such employees may be useful in effecting change of procedures applied in monitoring hazards and risks. New employee can also be instrumental in making decisions concerning the adequacy of safety measures put in place by the management. Identify hazards in the new workplace and explain what processes should be put in place to make the new area free of hazards and risk of injury and disease. There are several ways in which hazards are identified in the new workplace. They include: recording complaints, observations, monitoring illness and injuries, inspection and consulting between employees and employers. After identifying hazard, the proprietors should assess the degree of the danger posed by identified hazards. Nevertheless, if hazard elimination is not feasible, the identified risk should be totally minimized by applying the most effective method such as isolating the hazard, minimizing by introducing engineering controls, substituting the system of work with safer ones, adopting administrative controls such as job rotation, training among others and lastly using personal protective equipments such as aprons. Hazards and risks must be fully controlled. Hierarchy of hazard control emphasizes control of hazards at the source. In this regard, it gives preference to engineering controls since they are considered less likely to be affected by human failure and they have minimal disruption and render the work place lesser uncomfortable for people working in the office (Saksvik, Nytro & Torvatn, 2003). Nevertheless, whichever the case, the effectiveness of every control measure should be closely monitored to ensure it works effectively. Engineering controls includes: designing the workplace in such a way that hazards are ‘designed out’. Existing hazards should be removed or substituted with less hazardous materials and equipments. The management should consider adoption of safer work processes by altering work systems to make them safer. Last but not the least is the installation of effective ventilation to ensure that the workplace is well aerated. On the other hand, administrative controls includes: establishment of appropriate administrative procedures such as routine housekeeping procedures and maintenance, job rotation to minimize boredom and training on correct work procedures and probable hazards. It is the duty of the employer to provide safer working space. In this regard, the employer must ensure there is sufficient working space to allow all workers to work safely. The surfaces and floor should be constructed and maintained in such a way to minimize chances of slippery and falling. In addition, workers should be able to move freely within the place of work. The workplace should be properly lit. However, the amount of light should not be too excessive to deter workers to move safely within the workplace. In the event of change of environment, the management should provide adequate access to heated areas or warm clothing to protect employees from exposure to coldness. The workplace should be fitted with fire prevention equipments in case fire breakout. References Gardner, D. (2000). Barriers to the implementation of management systems: lessons from the past, Quality Assurance, 8(3), 3–10. Kogi, K. (2002). Work improvement and occupational safety and health management systems: common features and research needs, Industrial Health, 40, 121–133. Mearns, K., Whitaker, S.M. and Flin, R. (2003). Safety climate, safety management practice safety performance in offshore environments, Safety Science, 41(5), 641–680. Saksvik, P.O., Nytro, K.and Torvatn, H. (2003). Systematic occupational health and safety work in Norway: a decade of implementation, Safety Science, 41(14), 721–738. Appendix 1: Induction form for new employees New employees should answer the following questions in order to give their contribution towards occupational Health and safety systems. 1) List 3 most probable hazards that you may find in the workplace: 2) List injuries that are highly probable in the workplace: 3) Explain the importance of consulting or discussing health and safety issues with workers. Read More