Health and Safety Management - Essay Example

 CREATING AND MAINTAINING A POSITIVE HEALTH AND SAFETY MANAGEMENT CULTURE The Health and Safety Management Concept The concept of safety culture was first introduced in order to explain how the organization’s lack of knowledge and understanding of risk and safety could lead to disaster. The term “safety culture” originated when Chernobyl Accident brought attention to the importance of safety culture and how managerial and human factors can impact the outcome of safety performance (Cox and Flin 1988). The Health and Safety omission (1993) states that safety culture refers to assembly of characters and attitudes in organizations and individuals establishing that nuclear plant safety issues must receive the attention warranted by their significance. Since the Chernobyl Accident, a number of definitions on safety culture was introduced, including that of the UK Health and Safety Commission, which describes safety culture as “the product of individual and group values, attitudes, competencies, perceptions, and patterns of behaviour that determine the commitment to, and the style and proficiency of, an organization’s health and safety management” (HSC, 1993). Some characteristics associated with safety culture include incorporation of group-shared values, beliefs, and attitudes. Since the 1980s, a large amount of research on safety culture has been conducted and a number of definitions about it depend on the individual’s perceptions that are shared with a group and are hence referred to as “shared perceptions of safety” (Glendon et al. 2006). This paper aims to analyse critically how an organisation may create and maintain a positive health and safety culture. The safety culture of an organization is the product of individual and group values, perceptions, attitudes, competencies, and patterns of behaviour that determine the commitment to an organisation’s health and safety management. It is thus, not just an outcome of policy, but a shared group values alongside the ones mentioned, determining such policy towards health and safety management. Organisations that have established positive health and safety culture are characterised by communication founded on mutual trust, as well as by their shared perceptions of the importance of health and safety in the workplace and by confidence in the efficacy of preventive measures that the organisation has adopted. Creating and maintaining a positive health and safety culture are important to an organisation. The Successful and Safety Management (HSG 65) drafts a framework for managing health and safety pertaining to planning, accident and incident investigation, as well as health and safety auditing towards this end. HSG 65 explains the costs of getting it wrong and the likewise good effects of health and safety management to an organisation. Knowledge of health and safety management through HSG 65 is aimed at directors, managers, supervisors, owners of small firms, employee representatives, and other key players in the organisation who can effectively put into both policy and practice the significance of effectively managing health and safety. The importance of health and safety in organisations is so tremendous that statistics attests that at least one person is killed and over 6000 are injured at work in every working day in Britain (HSE 2003). Work-related illnesses prompt workers and employees to take time off and around 30 million workdays are lost to these illnesses as a result (HSE 2003). In addition to the cost of personal injuries, workers and their families may incur far greater costs from damage to property and equipment, not to mention lost production. The culprit to all these expensiveness and loss of productivity is a mismanaged / mishandled health and safety procedures or even lack of any health and safety management at all. Insurances protect employees from financial downfall due to these illnesses and workplace accidents, which the organisation spends for (Willis and Adelowo 1997). It apparently involves a lot of costs for the organisation, which could have been prevented by an n effective health and safety management. Studies conducted by HSE suggest that uninsured costs outweigh those covered by insurance policies, and in a wide range of business activities and sizes, the total uninsured losses from daily accidents ranged up to 36 times the total paid in insurance premiums in the same year; in which the average is mounted at around ten times the amount paid in premiums (HSE 1993). Accident costs can thus be viewed as an iceberg, with the majority of the losses hidden below the water mark. How an Organisation may Create and Maintain a Positive Health and Safety Culture Policy formulation on health and safety management is the primary stepping-stone of developing an environment that practices health and safety. Policy formulation should reflect in organizing, planning an implementing, measuring performance, and reviewing performance. Policy development is a task of the management in terms of implementing health and safety management in the organisation (HSE 2003). Organisational development is fostered by this policy, which passes on to the stage of developing techniques of planning, measuring, and reviewing. Reviewing performance set a feedback loop to improve performance through auditing the health and safety management scheme employed by the organisation. Auditing should reflect the objectives set forth in the initial policy development, aiming to check if the goals and objectives are met (Fuller and Vassie 2004). Setting your policy is the first step in effective management of health and safety in the workplace. Without a distinct policy on health and safety management, the same sorts of event that can possibly cause illnesses and injuries, which can likewise proceed to property damage and low productivity Oxenburgh, et al. 2004). This suggests that the organisation must aim to control all accidental losses through identification of hazards and assessing risks. By deciding what precautions are needed, the organisation is able to put them in place and check their use, as well as protect people, improve quality, and safeguard plant and production (Griffith and Howarth 2001). In order for health and safety policy to be truly effective, the organisation must influence all its activities, including the selection of people, equipment and materials, how the work is done, and how goods and services are designed (Hughes and Ferrett 2005a, p. 19). The organisation must provide a written statement of its policies and arrangements for implementing and monitoring them including the identified hazards and assessed, eliminated, and controlled risks. Alongside the abovementioned, the organisation should also determine that the policy it sets on health and safety management is clear and written down, with a regular evaluation of outcomes, such as what it has achieved in health and safety in the last year. It should be also able to measure the amount of money it spends on these areas and the corresponding value it reaps for such (Stellman 1998 p. 30). Organising the staff is important in ensuring effective health and safety management, which in turn produces a positive health and safety culture. The HSE (1993) describes the four C’s of positive health and safety culture as [1] competence, [2] control, [3] cooperation, and [4] communication. Competence should involve the recruitment process, as well as training and advisory support and must ensure that they handle health and safety management well. It should involve an assessment of skills needed to carry out all tasks safely as well as providing the means to ensure that all employees are adequately instructed and trained in health and safety management (Hughes and Ferrett 2005b, p. 25 ). The organisation must also ensure that people undertaking especially dangerous work possess the necessary training, experience, and other related qualities in order to carry out the work safely. Similarly, the organisation must be able to carry out restructuring in order to ensure the competence of new people taking on new health and safety tasks. Control in the management of health and safety involves allocating responsibilities, securing commitment, instruction, and supervision. The organisation may be able to do this by leading by example through demonstrating its commitment and providing clear direction (Hughes and Ferrett 2005b, p. 25). Control also involves identifying people who are responsible for particular health and safety jobs, such as doing risk assessments, driving fork lift trucks, etc. It also involves ensuring that managers, supervisors, and team leaders know and understand their responsibilities along with a sufficient time and resources in carrying them out. Setting objectives allows for people in the organisation to know what they must do and how they will be held accountable for not following health and safety policies of the organisation. Cooperation must involve individuals and groups and secure their commitment towards a unified observance of health and safety management to almost making it an organisation’s way of life. The organisation should chair its health and safety committee and consult its staff and their representatives on matters pertaining to health and safety. Instilling cooperation in the workplace also includes involving staff in planning and reviewing performance, writing procedures, and solving problems (McManus 1999 p. 257). The organisation should extend its cooperation to outside organisations with whom it must coordinate, such as contractors who work on its premises. The organisation, in ascertaining maintenance of a positive health and safety culture, should ensure that communication – spoken, written, and visible – is carried out effectively. A positive health and safety culture is one that provides information about hazards, risks, and preventive measures to employees and contractors working on the workplace premises (HSE 2001). By discussing health and safety regularly as well as being visible on this concern, the organisation allows for the creation and maintenance of a healthy and safe culture. The creation of a health and safety management culture starts with planning, which serves as the key that ensures viable health and safety efforts. Setting objectives, identifying hazards, assessing risks, and implementing standards of performance are involved in planning for health and safety, leading to developing a positive culture (Roughton and Mercurio. 2002, p. 34). The development and maintenance of positive health and safety culture also calls for complying with the health and safety laws that apply to the organisation’s nature of business, alongside the creation of a purchasing and supply policy that takes health and safety into account (Mol 2003, p. 281). Modification of the previous Organisational system is also called for, such as designing of tasks, processes, equipment, products and services, and safe systems of work, which are all in congruity to policies set pertaining to health and safety. This culture may also be enhanced through cooperation with neighbours and/or subcontractors who play a great key in the production process of the organisation (Roughton and Mercurio. 2002, p. 34). Setting standards of health and safety against which performance can be measured is indicative of a culture that the system intends to create and maintain. This is so since standards tend to help build a positive culture and control risks as well as set out what people in the organisation shall undertake to deliver its policy and control risks. The attainment of a positive culture in terms of health and safety management might not be possible if efforts are not concretized and made specific. Thus, statements such as “staff must be trained or “all machines will be guarded” are difficult to ascertain since they are general statements of necessities. The organisation must ensure the people who will be trained and those that will train them, and ascertain the measure of the adequacy to make these statements specific, applicable, and realizable (Stranks 2003). Some examples of safety measure, which the organisation can adopt as a way of life and develop as a culture, are maintaining workshop temperatures within a specified range, specifying levels of waste, and arranging to consult staff or their representatives at set intervals. Lastly, the organisation can ensure a positive culture of health and safety management by ensuring effective monitoring systems. These monitoring systems are active monitoring and reactive monitoring, in which the first involves monitoring before things go wrong, ascertained by taking time off and asking oneself, “am I achieving the objectives and standards I set, and are they effective?” This monitoring prevents any damage to take place, as the individual or group is able to see and discover potential flaws during the task (Perezgonzales 2005). By this prevention, the organisation is able to maintain a positive culture of health and safety management. Reactive monitoring on the other hand, involves assessing things after things go wrong, which involves investigating injuries, cases of illness, and property damage, which the individual or group identifies in each case why performance was substandard (HSE 2003). Just like active monitoring, reactive monitoring is able to help instill a positive culture of health and safety with its goal to remedy, reevaluate, and reconstruct processes involved in the damage. References Cox, S. J. and Flin, R., 1988. Safety culture. Philosopher’s stone or man of straw? Work and Stress. Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 189-201. Fuller, Colin and Vassie, Luise H., 2004. Health and safety management: principles and best practice. Prentice Hall. Glendon, A. I. Clarke, S. G. and Mckenna, E. F., 2006. Human safety and risk management. Florida, CRC Press. Griffith, Alan and Howarth, Tim, 2001. Construction health and safety management. Longman. HSC (HEALTH AND SAFETY COMMISSION), 1993. Third report: organizing for safety. ACSNI Study Group on Human Factors. HMSO, London. HSE, 2001. A guide to measuring health and safety performance. Retrieved on August 20, 2008 from http://www.hse.gov.uk/opsunit/perfmeas.pdf HSE, 2003. Managing health and safety: five steps to success. 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