Occupational Health and Safety - Advanced Human Resource Perspective - Assignment Example

OHS (occupational Health and safety) portfolio OHS laws and institutional frameworks The purpose of the OHS Act is to provide safety, health and welfare of workers and all persons lawfully present at workplaces. According to the ACT, Employees, workers and everyone in the work place has responsibilities (Section 3.10) Every employee at the workplace shall ensure there is protection of his own safety and health and that of other people who may be affected by his or her actions or lapse at the workplace. He or she must cooperative with the employer or a person in charge of any duty imposed by this OHS Act or regulation made here. Every employee should wear protective clothing and use protective equipment to prevent to his health and safety. All employees must also adhere to health and safety procedures, instructions and requirements by the person in charge, for his own safety. Any situation an employee believes would bring a hazard and is not in a position to protect it should be reported to the supervisor. Any injury or accident occurring in connection to the employee’s work should be reported to the supervisor. An employee should ensure that he is cooperative to any requirement or duty imposed on his employer to ensure it is performed. An employee who breaks the provisions of the OHS Act commits an offence and can be convicted to a heavy fine or serve jail terms (Section 13.17). According to the OHS Act, an occupier ‘is the person in actual occupation of a workplace, whether as the owner or not and includes an employer’ (Section 6.12). Every occupier shall that ensure that all people working in his workplace have safety, health and welfare. Occupiers should provide and maintain systems and procedures of work that are safe and supporting health. They should also ensure that there is absence of health risks connected to the use, handling and storage of articles and substances transportation. Information, instructions, training and supervision of health and safety should be provided to all employees at work. Occupiers in control should provide maintenance at the workplace in a safe and no health risks condition. They should also provide and maintain a safe environment that is without health risks and facilities for the welfare of employees. Occupiers should also inform all new employees of risks and dangers that may be brought by the new technologies to ensure participation in the application and reviewing of health and safety measures. Occupiers should carry out risk assessments on safety and health of employees, and use the results to develop preventive and protective measures to ensure that when using chemicals, equipment, chemicals, tools and machinery as well as processes there will be safety and risk free health as complied to the OHS Act requirements. The risk assessment report shall be sent to the area Occupational Safety and Health Officer by the occupier. Immediate steps shall also be undertaken to stop any activity that is dangerous to the safety and health of employees. Every occupier also has a duty to register his place of work unless exempted from registration under OHS Act. Every occupier is expected to comply with a duty imposed on him under this act where failure to do so is committing an offence and shall be liable to a fine or imprisonment (Section 6:13). (533 words). Task 3 - managing psychosocial hazards Psychological hazard is the inbuilt characteristics of an environment condition, changing set of circumstances, real or perceived threat to a person or their property. It is often defined in terms of interactions amongst management, work organization, job content, environmental conditions and the employee’s needs, personal resources and competencies (Government of South Australia (Government of South Australia 2005). These hazards influence employees’ health through experience and perception. Psychosocial hazards are also associated with experience of job dissatisfaction, stress and health problems. These hazards include occupational violence, bullying and harassment, alcohol and drug misuse, customer aggression, demands of workers’ capacity to deliver in capacity and fatigue resulting from working for long hours. Psychosocial hazards have increased by the increase of work intensity, changes in organizational practices and change in social expectations of employee treatment by fellow workers, managers and supervisors (Australian Government Productivity Commission 2010). Work-related stress is the response employees give when present with pressures and demands that don’t match with their abilities and knowledge to challenge their ability to cope with it. Stress is manifested when employees feel they aren’t getting support from their colleagues and supervisors. Stress tolerance varies per individual; however each has a verge over which work stress becomes destruction. Psychosocial hazards that trigger stress are work factors like inflexible work arrangements, unreasonable demands and excessive hours. All this leads to poor work life balance. Noise, ergonomic and overcrowding problems are part of physical work environment a psychological hazard. Another hazard is organizational practices that include organizational strategies and strategies that are not clarified, unclear roles and responsibilities, and poor lines of communication in the organization. Workplace change is also a psychosocial hazard that contributes to high staff turnover and job insecurity. If relationship at work is sour it becomes a psychosocial hazard where there is poor staff-supervisor relationship or management-colleagues relationships. This leads to harassment, violence and bullying at work (Australian Government Productivity Commission 2010). The job content of an individual can cause hazardous conditions like lack of variety, physical constraint, underutilized skills, meaningless work and high uncertainty. The role one plays in an organization can result in role conflict and continual contact with other people. Workload and work pace cause time pressure, high levels of pacing, quantitative or qualitative work overload or underload and lack of control. Work organization causes work shift, unpredictable hours, inflexible work schedule and long hours. They become harmful and impair the individual and company productivity. If these hazards are not management, they cause illnesses and injuries, poor morale, inefficiency and high health care costs (Rick & Brinerl 2000. Extended hours of work, shift work and inadequate breaks taken between shifts are hazards to creating fatigue. People are likely to have impaired judgment, reduced visual, slow reaction time and difficult in concentration if they are suffering from fatigue. This is an impact from work situation that involve heavy machinery or other occupations in terms of long hours. To manage these hazards, reduction of employee exposure to psychosocial hazards should be the most effective way. This means they should be understood and managed well in advance. Workers with a high demand for production and put in high efforts with low rewards in the end are likely to get angry, frustrated, and stressed which will then result to poor mental and physical health, sabotage and aggressive behavior. This is in the case where employees perceive their employer to be unfair. Work stress contributes to hypertension, inflammatory bowel diseases, ulcers cardiovascular diseases and musculoskeletal problems. Cancer may also develop due to alteration of immune functions. Depression, stress and anxiety just like muscular-skeletal disorder have become cause of employee absence from work. Still in many companies employees have been awarded substantial damages as a result of what they suffered from work stress (Rick & Brinerl 2000) OHS legislation of all jurisdictions has outlined the responsibility to detect and manage psychosocial hazards in the workplace. Under the legislation, employers have a duty to provide a healthy and safe working environment for employees at the work place (OHS Chapter 2). Workers also have a responsibility to ensure that what they do does not constitute their health and safety risk at the work place. Managers should also ensure that they take reasonable steps to resolve bullying cases or abuse at the work place. All jurisdictions under the OHS Act provides materials on impacts of bullying at workplace to employers and employees in the form of guidance notes and all the stakeholders should make sure all these are acted upon. This guidance note should enable employees and employers to work on preventing and responding to any bulling in the workplace. The guidance notes define the behaviors of bullies, the process of risk management in identifying, assessing and controlling those behaviors and provide alternatives on how to control and managing bullying behavior. To detect and manage fatigue, a code of ethics should be introduced or if it is already there, it should be implemented. There are jurisdictions that provide guidance materials on fatigue that employees and employers can use to manage fatigue in the work place (Australian Government Productivity Commission 2010). Psychological hazards cause adverse effects to employee’s health. These hazards are related to interaction amongst employees’ needs, competencies and personal resources and management, job content, environmental conditions and work organizations. These hazards include bullying and harassment, occupational violence and customer aggression, demands of workers capacity to deliver in capacity and fatigue. To manage psychosocial hazards in the workplace means reducing the hazards by understanding and managing them in advance. The employers and employees should ensure they take their responsibility to create safety and healthy environment at work under the OHS Act. The guidance notes on bullying at work place should be shared amongst employees and employers to prevent and respond to bullying. How Human Resources Activities can be used to manage psychosocial hazards Recruitment A job design should be put in place and job description showing responsibility is included. An analysis of the job should be done by analyzing the study of the tasks that are to be performed which are written in the job description. This helps to know the mental and physical characteristics of the applicants they must possess, attitudes and qualities desired. This ensures that a right individual is assigned to a task he can handle without feeling overwhelmed (Rick and Brinerl 2000). Performance appraisal Making use of appraisal can improve the performance of an organization and help the management assess how well its employees are working. Clearly defined objectives should be defined in order to help employees focus on specific tasks and the goals of the organization. Employees will feel that their work is being recognized and valued if a structured appraisal system is used. The systems also provide an opportunity for the management and employees to discuss any problems and areas of weaknesses that they may have then draft the solutions. Performance appraisal will a company to improve on its productivity, make decisions regarding, job changes, promotion and termination, identify goals and responsibilities of the job, assess employee’s performance against the goals, improve employees performance by identifying areas of improvements, providing a plan to improve these area, supporting the efforts of employees through feedback and assistance to improve and ensures that employees are involved and committed to improving the performance (Rick and Brinerl 2000). Reward systems Rewards systems are mechanism where employees share in the dream of the organizations. They are programs used by a company to reward the performance of employees and motivate them. Things that need done get done as employees are motivated. Normally rewards are separate from the salary and may or may not be of monetary in nature. Reward system should be aligned to the values, vision and mission of the organization as well as the behavior that is under the control of employees. Key measurements of the performance or behavior based on the previous achievements of the individuals of group should be determined. Appropriate rewards should then be determined and the reward program communicated to employees (Rick and Brinerl 2000). Task 4- notifying reporting and managing incidents The driver was cleaning the company track when he fell. He tried to clean the chute of the track but since he couldn’t reach it, he decided to climb on the track despite having no place to hold his hand he decided to use the top edge of the track to hold his left hand while cleaning the chute with the right hand. At some point he was making progress his hands and feet became slippery which made it difficulty for him to hold tightly. He then slipped and fell on the ground. Since he fell on his back, he experienced back pain. The hazard was the height of the truck which made it difficult for the driver to reach the chute. Heights could have caused him to strain and he could have felt pain at his back which made him loose control and slipped to the ground after which he experienced back pain and sensation chills in his legs. Since he landed on his back there is a possibility that his backbone was strained. Another hazard is the lack of handling equipments. These equipments include long wipers and long brushes which a driver could have used to clean the track without climbing up. The slippery area where he had rested his feet and hands also caused him to fall. Recommendations: In the corrective action the driver should use a ladder to climb on the track every time he is cleaning to avoid straining. In the preventive action the procedure on how to clean trucks should be used in order to prevent risks of the driver’s safety from taking place. A follow up action is when the action taken by the management or supervisor to make sure that the procedures are being followed keenly by the driver or anyone cleaning a truck (Department of Health. 2010). The driver should follow the manufacturer instructions of on how to handle different parts of the truck including cleaning, as a corrective action. The prevention action should be that a procedure on how employees should adhere to the manufacturer instructions should be drafted and in the follow up action a supervisor should ensure those instructions are followed or not. As a corrective action the company should provide the driver with cleaning equipments which he can use to clean the truck while standing on the ground without forcing him to climb up. The preventive action should be a draft of a procedure explaining the equipments the driver should use in cleaning the truck. The follow-up action should be for a supervisor to ensure that the driver follows that procedure. The management should consider buying tracks with automatic chutes or replace the current chute with an automatic chute which can be assembled and be assembled or it can be set high up or can automatically come down for easy cleaning as the corrective action. The preventive action should be a procedure entailing the type of trucks to be bought next time; the one with removable or automatic chute for easy cleaning. The follow up action is for a supervisor (Department of Health 2010) Reference Department of Health. 2010. Checklist for Reporting, Managing and Investigating Information Governance Serious Untoward Incidents. Retrieved on May 3, 2010, from Rick, J. and Brinerl, R., B. 2000. Psychosocial risk assessment: problems and prospects. Occup. Med. 50:310-314. http://occmed.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/50/5/310.pdf> (accessed May 5, 2010) The Occupational Safety and Health Act, 2007 Government of South Australia. 2005. Psychological Health Management Procedure. http://www.decs.sa.gov.au/docs/documents/1/PsychologicalHealthManage.pdf (accessed May 5, 2010) Australian Government Productivity Commission. 2010. Psychological Hazards http://www.pc.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0003/96177/13-chapter11.pdf (accessed May 5, 2010) Read More