Business Ethics of Stakeholders - Essay Example

BUSINESS ETHICS ………………………….. College ……………………………… ……………….. Stakeholders when an employee falls or is injured Falls and injuries are leading causes of deaths in workplaces, mainly in construction and mining industries. Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 has acceded regulatory authority by assigning them with the duty and responsibility of regulatory functions such as settling standards and conducting inspections (McCurley, 2013). OSHA constantly conducts inspections and issues citations to employers who are found to fail to provide adequate safety to their employees. Violations of the safety measures result in varying levels of financial penalties. The OSHA asks employers in the United States to comply with its regulations to ensure that they provide safe and healthful workplace, and it constantly monitors strict compliance to these regulations by conducting inspections, whistle-blower activities, post-incident follow-ups etc. According to the norms of this act, employer is basically held responsible for employees’ falls or injuries that occurred due to employer’s failure to provide adequate safety and health measures instructed in the OSH Act. OSH Act imposes a duty on employers to take steps to control risks to employees or third parties from slips, trips and falls. However, employees are also held responsible for falls or injuries if it happened due to their mistakes, because they are under the duty to behave in a responsible way to ensure their own safety and the third parties near to them. Even after 44 years since Congress passed the OSHA of 1970 by strictly instructing employers to provide workplace safety, security and health to make employees free from hazards, the toll of workplace injuries and deaths still remain unjustifiably high. As of OSHA’s report, there were 4,405 death cases in the United States due to falls or injuries in workplaces in 2013 (osha.gov, 2015). Work injuries and hazards cause severe impacts on income inequalities and create a big burden of medical and other expenses on employees. In order to eliminate workplace injuries and its impacts, OSHA has not only made it stricter that employers are responsible for employees’ injuries, but also asked employers to become familiar with standards applicable for their establishments or workplace environments. According to many health and safety professionals today, simply complying with OSHA standards is not sufficient to safeguard all employees in the workplace. Instead, these professionals have developed extensive written compliance programs with which compliance is achieved and maintained as part of the all-encompassing safety and health protection programs (Schneid, 2015). Ethical aspects of preventing slips and trips A worker’s carelessness or his mistake in the workplace can be a factor to be considered behind his injuries or falls, but more importantly, the slippery spots or certain stuff in the passage that caused his falling, for instance, are most significant causes of his falling or trip over. This is the main reason why employer is held more responsible for workplace injuries or health hazards. From the ethical point of view, the employer has the responsibility to ensure that his employees and third parties visiting the premises will be safe mainly for that the injured experiences hevy costs and severe difficulties to deal with medical as well as other requirements. For injured employees, and even for their families and dependants, a workplace injury creates a big trap as it leaves them unable to save for future or invest in skill enhancement o education to further advance in their career. For an organization, it is easy task to replace an employee. But, for a family, it is an issue of survival when its member’s injury contributes to the pressing issue of income inequality. An injury of a worker, for instance, forces working families out of the middle class and in to poverty (OSHA, 2015). It is thus not only a family related or social issue, but an economic issue as well to cause dangers of income inequality. It is injured workers, their families and taxpayer-supported components of the social safety system who primarily meet the costs of injured workers. There were some recent changes in the state-based worker’s compensation insurance programs, and these changes have made it difficult for injured employees to receive the full benefits such as medical coverage (OSHA, 2015). But in contrast, employers provide only a small portion equaling to 20 % of the overall financial costs that an employee incurred for an injury or fall or trip over at workplace. This is also through worker’s compensation. Employees have moral right to believe that their employer has taken reasonable measures to protect them from physical and mental harms. According to this ethical point, employees should be updated about known risks, encouraged to take care to avoid harms, and they must be trained in ways of working with safety and care. As Pfeiffer and Forsberg (2013) noted, there is some basic right to workplace safety is an important ethical consideration that is based on the principle of dong no harm, autonomy, lawfulness and maintaining other rights. Employability, adequate training, selective hiring and proper placing are some of the most important factors an employer has to consider while recruiting and selecting employees. Temporary workers, for example, are exposed to injuries and falls, for that they might have undergone relatively less training and development programs. Employers are morally and legally held responsible in all aspects to ensure that their employees are safe at workplace. Evaluation of the EDS program It was really amazing news that the leading Energy Company –EDF Energy based in UK- could reduce 40 percent of slips, trips and falls between 2010 and 2012. The video titled ‘Leading Energy Company tackles slips and trips’ (nd) illustrated some strategic ways and tricks through which the company could manage workplace safety and to reduce slips and falls that caused injuries in previous years. The company used communication as a basic tool to make people aware about safety and dangers of slips or falls. The company used its publications and reports through which the company continually communicated to people about safety measures. It kept messages of safety on walls too. These workplace strategy measures have helped the company become a sector leading company in aspects of workplace safety. 94 percent of its employees agreed that safety is at the very priority for everyone in the company. The company has built a strong Safety Performance in 2012 as the Lost Time Incident (LIT) rate was 0.6 incidents for every one million hours worked, and this was the best case ever. The company could also improve the Total Recordable Incident rate in 2012 and 2013. TRIR was 1.58 incidents per one million hours worked. This is exactly the results of continuous efforts the EDF management has put in and focused on maintaining Zero Harm. Employee Engagement survey has also helped the company achieve this success. The EDF case is an illuminating example that firms in construction, energy and any other industries could adopt its strategies or any of that kind to ensure that employees are safe at work. This is the power of communication, and this is the outcome of employee engagement. References Leading Energy Company tackles slips and trips (n.d.). Health and Safety Executive Retrieved from www.hse.gov.uk/slips/experience/energy.htm McCurley, L, 2013, Falls from Height: A Guide to Rescue Planning, John Wiley & Sons Osha.gov, 2015, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, United States Department of Labor, Retrieved from https://www.osha.gov/ OSHA, 2015, Adding inequality to injury: the costs of failing to protect workers on the job, Occupational Safety and Health Administration, United States Department of Labor Pfeiffer, R and Forsberg, R, 2013, Ethics on the Job: Cases and Strategies, Fourth Edition, Cengage Learning Schneid, T.D, 2015, Workplace Safety and Health: Assessing Current Practices and Promoting Change in the Profession, CRC Press Read More