Health and safety in HRM

 Health and safety in HRM

What is health and safety at work...?

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Health & safety meaning is this—it covers occupational programs, guidelines, and procedures you need have to ensure the health, safety, and welfare of your workforce.

If you establish the right policies and procedures and train your employees to understand them, then you can prevent and manage accidents or injuries in the workplace.

Workplace safety is a process that seeks to eliminate or reduce risks of injury or illness to employees. The chief aim of workplace safety is to protect an organization's most valuable asset—its people. Workplace safety is achieved through a variety of methods, including policies, procedures and specific hazard control techniques.

Policies and procedures are devised and integrated into the organization's overall management and administrative processes. They usually involve specific job task procedures established for working with or around equipment, hazardous environments or other forms of high-hazard conditions. Safety procedures and policies include accountability requirements to ensure that prescribed practices are followed.

Safety professionals apply a well-recognized hierarchy of measures to eliminate or control specific workplace hazards. The measures are applied as part of an orderly decision-making process, as follows:

Substitution. Can the existing process, material or equipment be replaced with a less hazardous process, material or equipment?

Isolation. Can barriers or limits be placed between people and the hazard? This could be physical barriers, time separation or distance.

Ventilation. Can the potential hazardous airborne substances be ventilated through dilution or capture?

Administrative controls. Can the hazards be effectively mitigated through specialized operating practices? Examples include restricting access to certain high-hazard areas to authorized personnel only, adjusting work schedules or adopting preventive maintenance programs to address potential equipment breakdown.

Personal protective equipment. If the preceding methods are not sufficient or feasible, can personal protective equipment be provided?

Workplace security

The chief aim of workplace security is to protect employees from internal and external security risks. Workplace security has gained much attention in the last several years due to an increase in workplace violence, the necessity of background investigations of prospective and current employees, Internet- and technology-based security needs, threats of terrorism, and increased legal liability to organizations for not taking reasonable measures to safeguard the workplace due to security threats.

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Workplace security risks vary depending on an organization's business, its location and its hours of operation. A fundamental element of any workplace security initiative is a security risk assessment. Risks need to be properly identified to establish appropriate methods, either procedural or physical barriers and systems.

• Establishing a formal security function.
• Establishing computer, e-mail, and Internet policies and procedures.
• Including non-compete agreements and other types of clauses in employment contracts for the protection of proprietary information and intellectual property.
• Developing crisis management and contingency plans.
• Establishing theft and fraud prevention procedures.
• Developing workplace violence prevention procedures.
• Installing premises security systems.
• Developing restricted-access policies and key-control procedures.

What are safety procedures at work place...?

t’s particularly important to follow these guidelines—in some working situations, there could be an accident if an employee doesn’t. This really highlights why health & safety is important.

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Overall, you should look to have effective safety plans, policies, training, and monitoring where necessary. Employee supervision may also prove essential over certain tasks.

There are some common health & safety practices in the workplace. These include procedures for:

• When staff are working at a height.
• Storing hazardous chemicals safely and securely.
• Dealing with infectious diseases or other illnesses such as coronavirus.
• Emergency procedures in the event of an accident.

Performing a risk assessment to determine the risks at your business will help you understand the steps you need to take to limit risks.

References...

Conn, E. J., McMahon, K. M. (2016). OSHA criminal cases on the rise.

Lievens, I., Vlerick, P. (2014). Transformational leadership and safety performance among nurses: The mediating role of knowledge-related job characteristics.

Pozgar, G. D. (2016). Legal aspects of health care administration (12th ed.).

Sprigg, S. M. (2015). Occupational traumatic injuries among workers in healthcare facilities.