Article: 7 Ways to Improve Operations Without Sacrificing Worker Safety
Article – objective
- Primary: The aim of the research is to analyse the relationship between workplace health and safety with obtained revenue streams and productivity
- Secondary: The research is focused on creating ways in which workplace health and safety can beimproved by maintaining revenue stream of an organisation.
- How safety of workers are being compromised for cost reduction? Example with DuPont facilities.
- Can company be successful and safe at the same time?
- What can be the actions taken by top management to promote health and safety at workplace?
Research method
- The research was conducted through primary research. The research is qualitative in nature
- Being a part of OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration), the author has conducted interviews with senior leadership of multiple organizations; to know their views regarding workplace profitability and importance of safety.
- It was observed that, the author has conducted more than 20 interviews as a part of study. One of the interviews he explained and focused was with DuPont facility CEO.
- The study has covered major organizations of United States of America
Research findings
- Creating ways to manage workplace health and safety with maintaining profitability & productivity
– Awareness of the health aspects on top management (Michaels, 2018)
– Create safety culture at workplace and award employees with incentives
– People make mistakes, take responsibility and don’t blame employees
– Generally, Organisation aims for lowering the rate of injuries every year; rather it should aim for ZERO injuries
– Create lead indicators to mitigate the risk of injuries; for instance Allergan company has designed an indicator named ‘Good observations’
– Design effective safety and health management system
Literature review findings
– Assessing current workplace scenario, intervene and develop a model which promote safety considering food industry (Sorensen, et al., 2019)
– Employees & employers are equally responsible to follow health and safety guidelines (Jonathan & Mbogo, 2016)
– Ethical climates and workplace behaviours affects the mental health of employees (Rathnayake & Karunasena, 2016)
– Employee engagement leads to less stressful work environment (Peart, 2019)
Conclusion
– It is essential for top management to consider the work place safety as important as profitability
– Workers’ physical safety is as important as mental health
– Safety is not priority in the TO-DO list of operations, it is a prerequisite condition to start the organization
– OSHA has played major role in promoting health and safety at workplace, it results in 9% reduction in injuries that triggered workers’ compensation claims in the four years
– Positive relationship between employee mental and physical health on productivity and ultimately profitability
– Safe and secure environment leads to better productivity and promotes job loyalty
Article – how does it contribute to this week’s topic
- The literature review discussed about all strategic level and operational level of current issues
- Such as workplace injuries, stress related issue, work shifts and affecting body clock of an individual, employees personal issue which affects the overall mental and physical health of an individual
- The ways which were shows in the article to manage workplace health and safety by the author are similar with Five-step program discussed on the lecture (Nankervis, Baird, Coffey, & Shields, 2016)
- formulating a precautionary strategy
- Designing stress diagnostic model and system
References
Jonathan, G. K., & Mbogo, R. W. (2016). Maintaining Health and Safety at Workplace: Employee and employer’s role. Journal of Education and Practice, 7(29), 1-7.
Michaels, D. (2018, March 21). 7 Ways to Improve Operations Without Sacrificing Worker Safety. Harvard Business review.
Nankervis, A. R., Baird, M., Coffey, J., & Shields, J. (2016). Managing work health and safety . In M. B. Alan R. Nankervis, Human resource management: strategy and practice. AHRI.
Peart, N. (2019, November 5). Making Work Less Stressful and More Engaging for Your Employees. Retrieved from https://hbr.org: https://hbr.org/2019/11/making-work-less-stressful-and-more-engaging-for-your-employees
Rathnayake, U., & Karunasena, G. (2016). A Review of strategies to improve workplace safety through ethical climates. The 5th World Construction Symposium. Shrilanka: Greening Environment, Eco Innovations & Entrepreneurship.
Sorensen, G., Peters, S., Nielsen, K., Nagler, E., Karapanos, M., & Wallace, L. (2019). Improving Working Conditions to Promote Worker Safety, Health, and Wellbeing for Low-Wage Workers: The Workplace Organizational Health Study. Int J Environ Res Public Health., 16(8). Retrieved 2020
