A Research of How health and safety affect employees productivity and company profits in Koh Brothers Group - Essay Example

?A Research of How health and safety affect employee’s productivity and company profits in Koh Brothers Group Table of Contents Introduction 3 1Background of the Company 3 1.2 Research title, Research Question, Research Objectives 3 1.3 Research Rationale 3 2. Literature Review 4 2.1 Introduction to Literature Review 4 2.2 Importance of Health & Safety at Workplace 5 2.3 Health & Safety at Koh Brothers 6 3. Research Methodology 7 4. Conclusion 10 References 12 1. Introduction 1.1 Background of the Company Koh Brothers is a well established construction, property development and specialist engineering provider in Singapore. The company was started by Mr Koh Tiat Meng in the year 1966. They have various milestone projects under them such as flood alleviation, counting Rochor Canal and Kallang River to name a few. The group has wide-ranging construction services and 40 subsidiaries, joint ventures and associated companies which are spread over Singapore, China, Indonesia, Malaysia and Vietnam. Apart from construction, they have diversified business in building materials, real estate, leisure & hospitality. The company has received A1 grading by Building and Construction Authority (BCA) which enabled them to undertake various civil engineering projects and building projects over the years. Koh Brothers is currently the highest grade for contractor’s registration in this category. 1.2 Research title, Research Question, Research Objectives The report mainly focuses into the health and safety standards maintained by the company and how it can affect an employee’s productivity and company profits. To do this research we will look into various health and safety procedures carried in the firm which helps the employee in maintaining his or her productivity. 1.3 Research Rationale The research rationale out here is to find how does health and safety precautions taken for employees help increase their productivity and thereby give a boost to company profits. This topic is worth investigating since there are still a lot of organization does not apply a suitable health and safety regulations. This results in declining employee productivity. Firstly, health and safety is something that everyone desires in their job. Everyone wants to go home safely after work every day, without harm. Moreover, high number of accidents and employee sickness may result in company’s declining profit. Therefore, health and safety regulations should be improved and well implemented in order to increase company’s profits and employee’s morale in which lead to further productivity. This can increase company profits as it increase company’s reputations in the eyes of investors and stakeholders. 2. Literature Review 2.1 Introduction to Literature Review Our focus of study is to look into the health and safety standards maintained by Koh Brothers and how it has helped them to boost the employee performance and also boost the company profits. According to EANPC “Productivity is an expression of how efficiently and effectively goods and services (i.e. goods and services which are demanded by users) are being produced. Thus, its key characteristics are that it is expressed in physical or economic units - in quantities or values (money) - based on measurements which are made at different levels: on the level of the economy overall, that of a sector or branch of the economy, that of the enterprise and its individual plants/units and that of individuals” (EANPC, 2005). Being a construction company, Koh Brothers put a lot of stress on Human Resource. They believe that their people are behind the success of their company. Lot of health and safety measures are taken by them to ensure their protection and care. Their staff under-go through consistent upgrading course to make sure that they can develop their new-found skills, determine new efficiencies for their professional development, and achieve better satisfaction in their work. 2.2 Importance of Health & Safety at Workplace Research has shown that satisfied and happy employees will eventually perform their best which in the long run helps the company to attain greater profits. Koh Brothers have various health and safety concerns. Firstly the employees are provided with all the safely tools required while working in a construction place and are also given proper training and education about the risk factors involved during a construction process. Research done by a finding of a study (Lamm, Massey, Perry, 2006) that there is rising and convincing proof that when a company provides a healthy and safe working environment, it has the power to increase the productivity of the labourers and in turn increases the business profits. Argument was done by some analysts who say that production gains are very frequently at the cost of the workers’ health and safety. Businesses usually struggle to become more dynamic and in doing so are forcing their workers to work longer, harder and with higher consumption and most of the time in very dangerous conditions, and only apply health and safety norms to keep damages costs down (Massey and Perry, 2006; Mayhew and Quinlan, 1999; Dorman 2000; Quinlan, 2001). As noted by Lamm et al (2006), James (2006) “It has been observed that while exposure to risks related with machinery and manual labour are being reduced, other risks related to the increase in labour productivity are on the rise.” Lamm et al (2006) also suggested that efforts to increase productivity through work-related safety and health can have opposing results and point out the gaps in literature that while there is evidence that professional injuries and illnesses impact on productivity losses, it is not apparent whether or not reducing injuries and illnesses will repeatedly manipulate productivity profits. 2.3 Health & Safety at Koh Brothers Koh brothers have a unique approach to increasing productivity.  It is their belief that workplace performance is affected by the way managers and employees share positive values, approach and actions. The constant interaction between the employees and the managers is very important in building a good rapport and hence a good friendly atmosphere. To improve their output considerably through health and safety courses, they take a whole of business approach to health and safety which includes employee attitudes and workplace culture. They have a welfare development for staff make them motivated and hence increase motivation. At Koh Brothers, staffs undergo extensive health and safety improvement programmes. This helps them to avoid prevention measures. The management includes many technical incident innovations and organizational improvements as a part of the programme. They believe health and safety needs to be every one’s concern. Everyone includes the leader, managers and their staffs of course. Health and safety forms a standard component in everyone’s decision making process. Successful indicators are very important to evidently create the connection between business profits and the company’s expenditure in workplace health and safety. The company believes that it is important that health and safety performance pointers are a mix of outcome indicators and positive performance indicators These outcome indicators show if Koh Brothers is achieving targets or not, while the positive performance indicators calculate the measures taken to accomplish their targets successfully. Some examples of PPIs are the number of safety audits held, the percentage of employees who underwent health and safety training and the safety culture survey results. It has been found out that Poor health and safety leads to poor productivity. Some examples of poor workplace health and safety practices are physical and mental stress, lack of breaks, use of outdated equipments, poor lighting conditions or ventilations, lack of proper seating, poor supervision and no participation by the workers. Improving health and safety helps in improving morale and productivity in their business. The company’s workers do their work with less complexity as well as less threat. The workers welcome improvements measures that the company takes to make to their working atmosphere safe and healthy. Mental or physical strain and mishaps at work are two of the main causes of absence from work today. Whether they cause little, unprepared absences or continuing poor health, they have a serious effect on the company’s efficiency and earnings. Moreover when a worker becomes absent, the other workers have to fill up for him which makes the work slower and also creates a chance of other workers falling sick due to work load. 3. Research Methodology As discussed above we will be analyzing the impact of health and safety of workers on productivity and profits. In order to do so we will be conducting a research with the employees. The first step will be the evaluation that maintaining health and safety of the employees actually increases the productivity and hence the returns. It has been seen that taking care of employee’s health and safety actually increases the morale of the workers and hence increases the productivity. As mentioned by an author many reforms are applied in safety and health of workers with the expectation that they will work out but due to lack of solid evidence of effectiveness, the situation might become worse. However we need the tools to collect the data in order to verify this logic. Data can be collected in the form of self-reporting, archival sources, or mixed methods. However we should be aware that measuring the increases in productivity is highly challenging as well as demanding and fraught with difficulties. Though self-reporting is valuable sourcing when no other appropriate source of data is available or when the facts and figures are too costly to obtain. Never the less it is based on the detailed reporting of the employer or employee. When it comes to the validity of the archival data is the most favored source, on the other hand, not all employers collect archival data and very often the data is limited to a small sample size. Another requirement is the need to clarify the range of measurement tools accessible to review the impact of health and safety on productivity, including non-attendance, presenteeism, short- or long-term disability, as well as defining the increments and gains in physical condition and security related efficiency interference. The next step of the research would be to evaluate the economic benefits of having safety and health measures in the company. One of the main reasons for implementing these measures is the consequential economic profit of Kol Brothers. More particularly, there is credit that economic growth and profits occurs due to the increased productivity. Better administration of the employee’s health and safety and related output outcomes create a competitive business gain. However, earlier reports show that it is not effortless to encourage employers of the economic benefits of maintaining health and safety programmes as generally the company will undervalue the expenditure of the health and safety problem while overestimating the costing related with its solution. This complexity is difficult by the fact that in many cases numerous attempts will be applied at the same instance (not only health and safety measures but also human resource actions), which makes it tough to relate a particular initiative to a definite outcome or outcomes (i.e. increased productivity = profits). Never the less, there are a number of ways to estimate the cost of an OHS (occupational health and safety) measures. There are two models which are very popular, the insurance model and the benefit analysis model. The insurance model uses workers’ payment insurance information to provide an estimate of the costs of health and safety = interventions. Although this approach has the benefit of ease in that it is reliant on only one source of information, but it is also limited. On the other hand the cost benefit analysis model requires more data than the insurance model in that it calculates and measures all important service and manufacturing factors and thus it helps in providing a much clearer picture. That is, it analyses the total costing of employment and the losses due to office based injury or illness. Since this process is concentrated specifically on the organisation, it gives us a better idea of the definite economic profits. According to Lahiri, et. al. (2005: 242) “there are four elements within the framework: 1. The cost of the equipment and labour of the intervention enters the cost equation as a positive component; 2. The degree of effectiveness of the interventions essentially determines the value of the avoidable costs of injuries and illnesses; 3. The increase in productivity results principally from the technological design of the equipment; and 4. The displacement of workers that might result from an increase in productivity of the intervention. He further added that in order to specifically analyze whether there has been financial benefits or not, as a result of the physical condition and safety measures, it is essential to collect the data on the direct and indirect costs incurred from the sources – namely: • Employee Data: this includes the total number of workers, their work timing and pay, overtime, and also their training and production costs; • Workplace Data: this includes supervisory costs, recruitment, insurance, and other general overheads, maintenance, waste, and energy use; and • Intervention Data: this relates to the costs linked with the involvement, for example, consultants’ fees, disruptions, errors, etc. 7 Oxenburgh (1991) and Oxenburgh & Marlow (2005) have expanded it further on determining the output increases as a result of health and safety intercessions in their software Increasing Productivity & Profit through Health & Safety (Product Ability, 2004). The data categories are intended to answer the question: “has optimal productivity been achieved?” If the answer is “no”, then the next questions are asked: “why” and “what can be done?” Oxenburgh and Marlow (2005) suggest that there may be a number of reasons for a lower than optimum productivity, for example, an ill conceived timeframe. There is an argument that it is vital to ensure that productivity data is relevant to the Health and Safety measures and includes both quantitative and qualitative statistics. They warn, however, that ascertaining the economic and productivity gains as a result of an OHS intervention can be difficult and necessitates resources being allocated. For small businesses, in particular, undertaking this exercise could be problematic as there may be a lack of resources and expertise as well as poor record keeping. 4. Conclusion Having done the complete analysis and research, it has been proven that improving the health and safety measures in Koh Brothers ultimately leads to a better productivity and helps the company in earning the extra revenues. However that should not be the sole motto. Employees well being should also be kept in mind. They have to keep in mind that they are a construction firm which involves lots of risks factors. Employees need to work in much hazardous condition. So, it is important that they are educated about the risks involved in this kind of work and also train them as to how to avoid them. There is increasing and convincing evidence that providing a healthy and safe working condition has the prospect to increase the labour productivity and in turn boost business profits. However there are some factors that cannot be avoided, for example, what are the harmful outcomes, what is the best way to evaluate the health and safety measures in order to increase the productivity and are there economic benefits involved? It is also evident that there are certain important components required, such a good lever of understanding between the management and the workers to make sure the success of the health and safety measure and hence forth the subsequent increase in the productivity. Koh Brothers as we can see in the research outcomes have taken subsequent measure to ensure that the employees work in a healthy environment and also follow the health and safety measures. They consider their employees as the most integral part of the company and that is why they have shown the concern of taking care of the employee’s health and safety. 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