Workplace Health And Safety: Risks And Solutions

Work Health and Safety Policies for Office Layout

Discuss about the Health and Safety at Work for Industrialization and Growing Service.

Workplace health and safety is the concern of wellbeing of people working for an organization. Today, accelerating industrialization and growing service providing sectors are resulting in such problems related to health and safety of employees at workplace. Nowadays this concern of wellbeing of employees is considered as a driving force to the management to look for its solution in order to minimize or mitigate such hazards at workplace. In last few years Health, Quality, Knowledge and safety requirements in many nations have been showing more concern than was in the case of previous years (Berger, & Hobbs, 2006). Some researches state that community pressure is the driving force of such legislation changes in these nations over the last few years. This report is providing a brief understanding of work place health and safety requirements along with their assessment to identify such risks and discusses possible solutions to minimize or mitigate these risks. This report will provide a brief scenario of the workplace situation and its requirements. In the last this report will make it possible to understand that how important is workplace health and safety is along with different alternatives to reduce such incidences to take place more often. Discussion in the report is about the work health and safety policy for office layout consideration of any organization.

Manpower group of Australia is committed to ensure a healthy and safe work environment of organizations. To ensure this healthy and safe environment in organization a policy is developed to ensure some standards (Robinson, 2005). This policy regards all injuries and illness at workplace as being preventable and ensures their control. This policy is developed to

• Comply with relevant standards, legislations, safe operating procedures, and codes of practice
• Establishing, reviewing, and maintaining objectives of continual improvement of WHS performance
• Ensures to identify, assess and effectively control all the hazards and risks associated to the work activities
• Monitoring effectiveness of measures to control or mitigate such hazards
• Supports an early and safe return to the work of employees injured in such accidents

This policy ensures providing the following to the employees working in organization

• Healthy and safe workplace: This means organizations should ensure a healthy environment to work in as there should be no hazardous to the health. This requires hygiene of the workplace to control health issues to the employees.
• Safe systems to supervise the work: This defined that organizations are responsible to provide an advanced and effective system to supervise these work health and safety policies.
• Advanced equipment: Every workplace is full of different kind of equipment to be used by the employees therefore employees must be provided with updated technology of the equipment used at workplace (Safety, 2018).

Management representatives are responsible to implement this policy in their respective areas. This implementation of the policy by the executives or managers is measured via annual performance reviews of such implementations. This policy of work health and safety states that management of any organization is responsible for

• Provision and maintenance of safe work place area for the employees
• Their involvement in the development, improvement and implementation of such policies on a regular basis
• Training of employees in a safer and healthier environment
• Provision of essential resources to achieve a healthy and safe work environment to the employees of the organization

As well employees are responsible to

• Follow each policy and its procedure developed to create and maintain a safe and healthy environment t workplace
• Report every hazard or risk they observe, immediately to their manager or supervisor

Office layout of any organization is most important past to be concerned for its safety assurance. Office layout is the place where every employee spends its most of the time in an organization. Therefore office layout of an organization must follow such policies to ensure a healthy and safe work place environment in the organization.

Risk Management for Workplace Health and Safety

Section 58 of the safety, health, and welfare at work (general application) (amendment) regulations 2012 make following regulations to be followed by each and every organization to ensure a healthy and safe environments for employees of the organization. This act was provided to create a balanced and nationally consistent framework for the organization to ensure the health and safety of the employees and the workplace (Legislation, 2012). This assurance is done by

• Protecting employees and other people against any harm to the safety, health, and welfare by eliminating or minimizing risk associated with the surroundings of workplace.
• Providing effective and fair workplace consultation and representation.
• Promoting the provision of information, advice, and training or education in the relevant field.

These legislative acts and regulations are to be followed in policies made by the organization as well to standardize the policy impacts and effectiveness. Amendments to these acts and regulations are made sometimes therefore these policies should be provided with a compliance of updated acts and regulation for the work health and safety of the employees working in an organization (Gallagher, & Underhill, 2012).

Risks are associated with everything. Today every task or action is associated with different risks. Every element of an organization is associated with several types of risks. Workplace environment being the most critical element, to produce a healthy and safe environment to the employee, of an organization also associated with these risks. For such risks a complete risk management procedure is followed by the management of the organization (Wills, Watson, & Biggs, 2006). This risk management include different steps manage risks of an organization or nosiness or an environment. Risk management is important to create an environment suitable to work in for any organization. These risks are needed to be controlled effectively for any organization to maintain its reputation and market business.

Risk assessment is a part of risk management. Risks being hazardous in some cases are really needed to be assessed properly. This step involves the risk type, possibility, possible cause, and its impact on the work place of the organization. Risks listed in the above section of risk identification have different possibilities of occurring and their impact on the surroundings of the workplace (Driscoll, Harrison, Bradley, & Newson, 2008). This assessment of risk is carried out in two major steps one is identification of risks and other one is control of these risks (Robson, et al, 2007).

This step of the risk management involves the identification of risks associated with different elements of the environment. This is the most important step of risk assessment. Office layout includes many equipment or elements that can lead to the risks or hazards to the humans working over there (Dollard, & Bakker, 2010). These hazards associated with different equipment used in office are presented in the below table.

Risk equipment	Hazard
1 Ergonomic: ·         Poor posture ·         Excessive seating ·         Incorrect set-up of workstations ·         Repetitive movement	·         Physical injuries to the employees like injuries to the arms, shoulders, wrists, neck  or back ·         Eye strain
2 Electrical ·         Electric circuits ·         Electric machinery ·         Other electric components	·         Electric shock ·         Fire ·         Burns
3 Office equipment with ·         Sharp edges ·         Moving parts ·         Pinch points	·         Physical injuries ·         Entanglement ·         Physical cuts
4 Using compacts ·         Collisions of moving shelves ·         Falling items	·         Physical injuries
5 Working area ·         Slips or falls ·         Fire in the area	·         Physical injuries ·         Smoke inhalation and burns

Mitigating Risks for Ergonomic Layouts and Electrical Hazards

Risks or hazards will harm, the people working over there, physically as well as mentally (Papadopoulos, Georgiadou, Papazoglou, & Michaliou, 2010). In terms of physical harm risks mentioned above may cause physical injuries to the employees. Sometimes these injuries may result in consequences to their life as well. On the other hand in terms of mental impacts these accidents may lead to a negative psychology of employees about the organizations (Hohnen, & Hasle, 2011). High frequency of such accidents may also lead employees to leave the organization for their metal satisfaction. Such impacts of these hazards will cause a great loss to the organization in losing their experienced or talented employees. Therefore, every organization is concerned about mitigation of control of such hazards to provide a healthy and safe workplace to its employees.

To mitigate or control risks associated with the Ergonomic layout control steps may be

• Provide staff with their workstation guides
• Providing online ergonomics course to the employees
• Providing suitable or desired equipment to the employees
• Advising employees to report any symptom of such risks as soon as possible

To control electrical hazards steps to control the hazard are

• Regular inspection, monitoring, and testing off the electrical systems
• Providing tagging and testing of electrical components
• Providing individual RDC’s or MCB’s to specific equipment
• Regular inspection of the workplace area

Risks associated with the office equipment can be controlled by

• Providing cover to the moving parts of any equipment while working on it
• Ensuring standards to be followed while working with such equipment
• Providing safety procedures to the employees
• Providing essential training and instruction to be followed by the employees
• Use the office area and its equipment according their functionality

These impacts discussed above are very hazardous to employees and may cause significant loss to the organization. Such hazardous may cause consequences to the employees and may impact the organization image in the market. Sometimes, such hazards may result in leaving the organization by its employees (Johnstone, Quinlan, & Walters, 2005).

The above report about the work health and safety policy of an organization to ensure employee satisfaction explains the requirement of risk management and essential actions to be taken to produce a better work environment. Risks identified are very likely to occurs and hazardous significantly to harm people as well as office environment. Such risks can be controlled with the above discussed action to control such risks. For better control of risks it is recommended to identify these risks as soon as possible or at the beginning of any operation causing these risks. Organization should update its technology and equipment to mitigate risks associated with the office layout of the workplace. People should be provided with a healthy and safe environment at workplace. It is highly recommended to improve or upgrade these work health and safety policies of organization more frequently. If possible organizations are recommended to revise these policies annually. Policy review must be done in compliance with the legislations of the nation. Updates acts and regulation mentioned in these acts must be followed to meet the policy requirements. Although many organizations provide a separate risk management system for such risk management processes, this should be compulsory to provide such separate systems as the health and safety is the most fundamental right of human beings.

Conclusion

Conclusion

Work health and safety is an important facet of any business organization and is the duty of the employer to create and provide conducive environment for the employees to work. The onus lies on the management to ensure that the working conditions are set in accordance with the WHS norms and policies and are being beefed up on a regular basis. The above report concludes that risk management and implementation of work health and safety policies is necessary to provide a suitable work environment to the employees. Providing such environment will lead to a better performance of employees enhancing their efficiency and effectiveness. From the above reports it can be concluded that these policies of work health and safety are essential for organization as well as the risk management to implements and improve these policies is equally important. Within the purview of the organization, a team has to be created to facilitate the best practices of Work health and safety in the organization to make the employees feel empowered and secure while working in the organization. The goals of WHS have to be reviewed and monitored every quarter, and any changes whatsoever has to be suggested to the management. This conclusion leads to the requirement of continuous improvement or review of such policies on a regular basis.

References

Berger, A. M., & Hobbs, B. B. (2006). Impact of shift work on the health and safety of nurses and patients. Clinical journal of oncology nursing, 10(4).

Dollard, M. F., & Bakker, A. B. (2010). Psychosocial safety climate as a precursor to conducive work environments, psychological health problems, and employee engagement. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 83(3), 579-599.

Driscoll, T. R., Harrison, J. E., Bradley, C., & Newson, R. S. (2008). The role of design issues in work-related fatal injury in Australia. Journal of Safety Research, 39(2), 209-214.

Gallagher, C., & Underhill, E. (2012). Managing work health and safety: recent developments and future directions. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 50(2), 227-244.

Hohnen, P., & Hasle, P. (2011). Making work environment auditable–A ‘critical case’study of certified occupational health and safety management systems in Denmark. Safety Science, 49(7), 1022-1029.

Johnstone, R., Quinlan, M., & Walters, D. (2005). Statutory occupational health and safety workplace arrangements for the modern labour market. Journal of Industrial Relations, 47(1), 93-116.

Legislation. (2012). Work Health and Safety Act 2012. Retrieved from: https://www.legislation.sa.gov.au/LZ/V/A/2012/WORK%20HEALTH%20AND%20SAFETY%20ACT%202012_40/2012.40.UN.PDF

Papadopoulos, G., Georgiadou, P., Papazoglou, C., & Michaliou, K. (2010). Occupational and public health and safety in a changing work environment: An integrated approach for risk assessment and prevention. Safety Science, 48(8), 943-949.

Robinson, D. L. (2005). Safety in numbers in Australia: more walkers and bicyclists, safer walking and bicycling. Health promotion journal of Australia, 16(1), 47-51.

Robson, L. S., Clarke, J. A., Cullen, K., Bielecky, A., Severin, C., Bigelow, P. L., … & Mahood, Q. (2007). The effectiveness of occupational health and safety management system interventions: a systematic review. Safety Science, 45(3), 329-353.

Safety. (2018). Office Hazards and Risks. Retrieved from: https://safety.unsw.edu.au/node/65/

Wills, A. R., Watson, B., & Biggs, H. C. (2006). Comparing safety climate factors as predictors of work-related driving behavior. Journal of Safety Research, 37(4), 375-383.