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WHO IS INVOLVED WITH SAFETY AND HEALTH?
As with other HRM functions, the success of a safety and health program requires the support and cooperation of managers. But it is more complicated than that: In some organizations, safety is a separate function, though both managers and staff still have their parts to play to protect employees.
Top management must support safety and health with anadequate budget. Managers must give it their personal support by talking, about safety and health with everyone in the firm. Acting on reports about safety is another way top managers can be involved in these efforts. Without this support, the effort to ensure safety and health is hampered. Some organizations have responded to the environmental problems that can increase accidents, deaths, anddisabilities by placing the responsibility for employees’ health and safety with the chief executive officer on the organization: the hospital administrator, the agency administrator, the company president. This is the approach taken by most smaller organizations that are concerned about health and safety. Operating managers are also responsible, since accidents and injuries will take place and healthhazards will exist in the work unit. They must be aware of health and safety considerations and cooperate with the specialists who can help them reduce accidents and occupational illnesses. In larger and chapter will illustrate what a safety and health specialist does.
The success of the safety program rests primarily on how well employees and managers follow and comply with safety rules andregulations. Often, this relationship is formalized in the creation of a safety committee consisting of the safety specialist, representative employees, and managers. Usually there are two levels of safety committees. At the policy levels is the committee made up of major division heads; this committee sets policy and rules, investigates major hazards, and has responsibility for the budget. At thedepartmental level, both supervisors and employees are members. Safety committees are concerned with the organization´s entire safety program: inspection, design, record keeping, training, and motivation. The more people who can be involved through the committees, the more likely is the program to be successful.
Finally, the government inspector plays a role in keeping the organization on its toesregarding the safety of the employees.
A DIAGNOSTIC APPROACH TO SAFETY AND HEALTH
The environmental factors important to health and safety are highlighted in Exhibit 17-4. Probably the most crucial factor is the nature of the task, especially as it is affected by the technology and working conditions of the organizational environment. For instance, health and safety problems are a lot moreserious for coal miners – whose working conditions require them to breathe coal dust in the air – than for an office employee. An X-ray technician has a much greater cancer of getting cancer as a result of working conditions than does an elementary school teacher.
A second vital factor is employees’ attitudes toward health and safety. Attitudes can vary from concern for safety and cooperationregarding safety programs to apathy. If employees are apathetic, the best employer or safety program and the most stringent safety inspection by government of the safety specialists in the HR department will not improve conditions.
The third factor affecting health and safety program is economic conditions. We would accept the worst possible assumptions about human nature if we believed that anyemployer knowingly would chose to provide dangerous working conditions or would refuse to provide reasonable safeguards for employees. But there is a lack of knowledge about the consequences of some dangerous working conditions, and even when there is such knowledge, economic conditions can prevent employers from doing all they might wish. The risks of being a uranium miner are well known: 10 to 11...