Employees of your organisation are your responsibility. Are you doing your best to maintain the safety and health of your employees? As an employer, you should deploy the most effective practices for workplace health and safety. It gives peace of mind to your employees about their working environment and makes them more productive. Whatever practices you adopt, they prevent work-related injuries and sicknesses which boost the morale of employees and help them to perform better with all concentration. Therefore, ensuring workplace safety benefits your employees as well as improves your business performance.
Every organisation has its own way to ascertain the health and safety of workers. Their approach for occupational health and safety (OHS) management mainly depends on their risk profile. For instance, large risks are involved in the tasks of workers in the construction, chemical, energy, defence, and heavy manufacturing industries, so they need a stronger OHS management system. Contrary to this, there are fewer risks in sectors such as IT services, retail, hospitality, agriculture, etc.
Whatever the risks are, you should ensure that the OHS management system appropriately aligns with your safety objectives and puts the best practices in place.
The first key to successful OHS management is the commitment of the organisation. You should put as much effort as possible to promote health and safety management practices across your organisation. You should do that by:
• Creating a stringent OHS policy
• Provisioning workers with safety tools or resources
• Providing training to employees on the OHS practices
• Holding regular meetings to update OHS practices
A major task for ensuring workplace safety is identifying the possible risks or hazards and acting to control them. The OHS management system should help you identify the risks through a methodological approach. This includes continuous evaluation of the records related to hazards, injuries, health effects, and close calls. You should investigate the causes behind them. Surveying the employees is also useful in concluding the causes. According to your risk assessment, you should prioritise the incidents (based on their impacts on workers), make plans to prevent them, and implement the plans. You should also later review the work environment or processes to ensure that the new practices have corrected the problems and won’t cause any further hazards.
You should identify the specific workplace safety laws, regulations, and standards imposed by the industry, labour unions, and government. You need to develop programs or measures to comply with them. It is recommended you maintain an OHS log where you keep a record of all your compliance requirements and follow the necessary measures to comply with each.
Not only the employers but employees themselves are responsible too for their own health and safety. While they may not be aware of the hazards and necessary safety practices, your organisation should train them and make them aware. They should be informed about the probable risks they are exposed to and trained on how to protect themselves. Training will help employees to get acquainted with the safety kits or tools to use at work, precautionary measures, and emergency procedures. Also, orientation should be provided to the new recruits to make them aware of your organisation’s OHS policies, practices, and emergency plans.
Any management aspect in business should adopt the continual improvement principle to provide value to the organisation in the long run. Hence, your OHS management system also should be improved time after time to provide better safety to workers and further enhance their productivity. For that, your organisation’s management personnel should review the system and identify its strengths as well as deficiencies. The review should be done half-yearly or annually. They should also analyse the data on injury and illnesses over time to evaluate the effectiveness of the system. Interviewing the employees and getting their opinions/suggestions is helpful for improving the OHS practices. Consequently, you can make the required changes in your OHS management system.
In organisations, employees are the most valued assets whose health and wellbeing determines your business productivity. These are the five core fundamentals of OHS management that help to establish an effective system for ensuring workplace health and safety. When employees find that your OHS management approach or practices are for their benefit, they are encouraged to perform better. Workplace safety management also results in higher retention of employees as they feel that the organisation cares for them.
While organisations can develop their own OHS management system, it is better to have a standardised system like ISO 45001 which is designed by incorporating the key safety practices of various industries, countries, and labour organisations. Therefore, it helps you to implement the most comprehensive regulatory system for managing workplace safety. If you need any assistance, Compliancehelp can help! We have a team of qualified ISO consultants with years of experience in various ISO management standards. Feel free to get in touch!
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