HEALTH AND SAFETY IN HRM

Safety: Involves protecting employees from injuries due to work-related accidents.

Health: Refers to the employees’ freedom from physical or emotional illness.

Safety programs may be designed to accomplish their purposes in two primary ways. The first approach
is to create a psychological environment and attitudes that promote safety. A strong company policy
emphasizing safety and health is crucial. The second approach to safety program design is to develop
and maintain a safe physical working environment.

• Physical Conditions: Conditions resulting from the workplace environment that include occupational
diseases and accidents, such as:

• Repetitive motion injuries

• Back pain

• Cancer Etc.

• Psychological Conditions: Conditions resulting from the workplace environment that result from
organizational stress and low quality of working life. These include:

• Dissatisfaction, withdrawal

• Mistrust in others, irritability

I. Safety Programs

Today, it has become clear that optimal health can generally be achieved through environmental safety,
Organizational changes, and different lifestyles.

Developing Safety Programs—Organizational safety programs require planning for prevention of

1. Job hazard analysis: The main goal of safety and health professionals is to prevent Job-related injuries
and illnesses.

2. The Superfund Amendments Reauthorization Act, Title III (SARA): SARA requires businesses to
communicate more openly about the hazards associated with the materials they use and produce and
the wastes they generate.

3. Employee involvement: One way to strengthen a safety program is to include employee input, which
provides workers with a sense of accomplishment.

b. Accident Investigation—Accidents can happen even in the most safety-conscious firms.

Each accident, whether or not it results in an injury, should be carefully evaluated to determine its cause
and to ensure that it doesn’t recur. The safety engineer and the line manager jointly investigate
accidents—why, how, and where they occur and who is involved. Main causes that can create accidents
at workplace are:

• Chance occurrences

• Unsafe working conditions

• Unsafe acts by employees

• Unsafe conditions

Physical conditions

• Defective Equipment

• Inadequate Machine Guards

• Lack of Protective Equipment

Environmental conditions

• Noise

• Dust, Fumes

• Stress

• Unsafe behaviors

c. Evaluation of Safety Programs—perhaps the best indicator that a safety program is succeeding is a
reduction in the frequency and severity of injuries and illnesses.

d. Rationale for Safety and Health Trends—Firms are spending an increasing amount of money on
safety. Reasons include;

(1) Profitability—employees can produce only while they are on the job,

(2) Employee relations—firms with good safety records can attract and retain good employees,

(3) Reduced liability—an effective safety program can reduce corporate and executive liability,

(4) Marketing—a good safety record may well provide companies with a competitive edge, and
productivity—

(5) An effective safety program may boost morale and productivity while simultaneously reducing rising
costs.
II. Ways to manage Safe and Healthy environment in organization

To cope with physical hazards and other hazards such as stress, unsafe behavior, and poor health habits,
employers often design comprehensive safety and health programs. Among these are safety programs,
employee assistance programs, and wellness programs.
a. Safety Programs safe working environment does not just happen; it has to be created. The
organizations with the best reputations for safety have developed well-planned and thorough safety
programs.

b. Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) EAPs are programs designed to help employees whose job
performance is suffering because of physical, mental, or emotional problems.

c. Wellness Programs

As health care costs have skyrocketed over the last two decades, organizations have become more
interested in preventative programs. A complete wellness program has three components:

• It helps employees identify potential health risks through screening and testing.

• It educates employees about health risks such as high blood pressure, smoking, poor diet, and stress.

• It encourages employees to change their lifestyles through exercise, good nutrition, and health
monitoring.

d. Smoking in The work place numerous studies have concluded that workplace smoking not only is
hazardous to employees’ health, but also is detrimental to the firm’s financial health. Increased costs of
insurance premiums, higher absenteeism, and lost productivity cost huge amount a year. These factors,
along with rising opposition from nonsmokers and widespread local and state laws, have spurred many
firms into action, and the trend continues.

¾ The rewards of good health habits

Effective safety programs share the following features:

• They include the formation of safety committee and participation by all departments within the
company. Employees participate in safety decision and management carefully considers employee
suggestions for improving safety.

• They communicate safety with a multimedia approach that includes safety lectures, films, poster,
pamphlets, and computer presentations.

• They use incentives, rewards, and positive reinforcement to encourage safe behavior.

• They communicate safety rules and enforce them.

• They use safety directors and/or the safety committee to engage in regular self-inspection and
accident research to identify potentially dangerous situations, and to understand why accidents occur
and how to correct them.

III. Policies to prevent workplace violence

Every organization should have a two-pronged policy in place to (a) prevent workplace violence and (b)
to deal with violent incidents when they occur. An HR manager's major responsibility is to be certain
that selection policies include careful screening and reference checking. Furthermore, the HR manager
should take the lead to enforce policies pertaining to the fair treatment of employees. This may require
training managers to recognize performance problems, refer troubled employees for counseling, and
apply disciplinary procedures consistently.

IV. Cumulative Trauma Disorders

CTDs are also called repetitive stress (or motion or strain) injuries (or illnesses or syndromes). CTDs do
not refer to only one disorder but to a wide array of maladies ranging from carpal tunnel syndrome to
tennis elbow.

The number of workers with CTDs has risen dramatically in recent years.

V. Benefits of a Safe and Healthy Workforce

• More productivity

• Increased efficiency and quality

• Reduced medical and insurance costs

• Lower workers’ compensation rates and payments

• Greater workforce flexibility

VI. The HRM Department and Employee Safety and Health

HRM department can help organizations and employers by performing tasks like:

• Develop safety and health programs.

• Select safety and health programs.

• Evaluate safety and health programs.

• Ensure legal compliance.

• Incorporate safety and health concerns in HRM practices.