Anticipate, Prepare, and Respond to Crises And Invest Now in Resilient OHS Systems

With the continued hazards and accidents occurring at workplaces recently, it’s important to raise awareness towards promoting safety and health culture in the work environment. We need to do all we can to reduce work-related injuries and deaths across the globe drastically.

The coronavirus crisis began in December 2019 in China and later emerged as a global pandemic, resulting in over three million deaths across the globe. This pandemic has had adverse impacts on businesses and governments. Notably, the pandemic has contacted virtually every part of the universe of work, from the danger of transmission of the infection in work environments to occupational health and safety (OSH) risks that have arisen because of measures to moderate the spread of the infection.

More than before, the COVID-19 pandemic has presented an opportunity and demonstrates the significance of investing in occupational health and safety systems in the world. There’s, therefore, the need to bring issues to light and animate discourse as to the importance of making and putting resources into versatile OSH frameworks, drawing on both local and country models in relieving and forestalling the spread of COVID-19 in the work environment.

The Covid-19 pandemic has uncovered a whole lot of occupational health and safety crises around the world. Workers are regularly denied even essential wellbeing and security assurances, safety tools, free access to personal protective gear, and protection from oppression for voicing issues related to occupational safety. In any case, similar issues existed before the pandemic and have led to millions of deaths related to the work environment.

The pandemic demonstrates why health and safety must be a right for everyone who works.

According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), 6,300 people die every day due to occupational accidents or work-related diseases. ILO, a United Nations agency, also stated that 317 million accidents occur on the job annually, many resulting in extended absences from work. The human cost of this daily adversity is vast. Also, the economic burden of poor occupational safety and health practices is estimated at 4 percent of global Gross Domestic Product each year.

The Hartford Financial Services Group survey estimated that 58 percent of blue-collar households have “a family member who has been injured on the job.”

Why Should We Invest in OHS Systems?

Implementing good occupational health and safety (OHS) practices can improve productivity and enable small businesses and larger corporations to thrive without damage to humans. Sound OHS systems will significantly reduce losses that often occur when workplace health and employees’ safety are neglected. It will also affect any country’s economy.

To understand the effect of poor occupational health and safety, the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, in its 2017 report entitled, “Investing in occupational safety and health for successful and sustainable businesses,” estimated that work-related injuries result in the loss of 3.0 percent of work years globally at the cost of approximately €680 billion.

Investing in occupational health and safety systems has tremendous benefits. It mainly boosts productivity and profits, improves employee engagement and brand reputation, prevents treatment or lawsuit costs, and helps in widening business benefits.

OHS goes far beyond legislation and legal requirement; it is implementing an efficient “culture of awareness” in organizations, which improves the performance of the workforce.

Well-being and safety assurance at work must be recognized as a right for all. Whether it is Covid or work-related malignant growths, or workplace injuries, every worker should have a right to a voice and a right to protection. Nobody should lose their health or life just to earn enough to pay the bills.

National occupational safety and health culture is one in which the right to a protected and healthy working environment is regarded at all levels, where governments, businesses and workers (staff) effectively partake in securing a safe and healthy working environment through an arrangement of defined rights, obligations and duties, and where the highest priority is accorded to the principle of prevention.

Finally…

To respond to a crisis, companies should create a safe and healthy working environment for their employees. Employees must be trained periodically on the basic principles of occupational health and safety and how to protect themselves from work-related dangers/ accidents. These training sessions would equip them with requisite skills and knowledge on how to manage workplace hazards.

According to the Liberty Mutual Workplace Safety Index, for every $1 a company invests in occupational health and safety, it receives $4 in return on investment.

An injured worker is an unhappy worker, and an unhappy worker is an unproductive worker. An unproductive worker has difficulty delivering value to customers. Therefore, investing in occupational health and safety systems is a win-win situation for the employees and the business.

Author: Adelowo Oguntola

Photo: beakon.com.au