Human resources professionals are assuming health, safety, and security responsibilities within organizations. Such responsibilities include the identification of hazardous conditions and practices, exposure control and mitigation strategies, legal compliance, development of a safety culture, and measurement of health, safety and security program effectiveness.
Occupational health and safety is a cross-disciplinary area concerned with protecting the safety, health and welfare of people engaged in work or employment. The goal of all occupational health and safety programs is to foster a safe work environment. As a secondary effect, it may also protect co-workers, family members, employers, customers, suppliers, nearby communities, and other members of the public who are impacted by the workplace environment. It may involve interactions among many subject areas, including occupational medicine, occupational (or industrial) hygiene, public health, safety engineering,chemistry, health physics.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration estimates the costs associated with repetitive strain injury (RSI) to businesses to be between $15 billion and $20 billion per year in the U.S. RSI in the workplace may be reduced by providing ergonomic workstation configuration and by providing appropriate pointing devices, monitors and keyboards to computer users.
USA.The National Whistle blower Center was established in 1988 to improve environmental protection, nuclear safety, and government and corporate accountability. Its primary goal is to ensure that disclosures about government or industry actions that violate the law or harm the environment are fully heard, and that the people who risk their careers to expose wrongdoing are defended.
Definition
Since 1950, the International Labour Organization (ILO) and the World Health Organization (WHO) have shared a common definition of occupational health. It was adopted by the Joint ILO/WHO Committee on Occupational Health at its first session in 1950 and revised at its twelfth session in 1995. The definition reads: “Occupational health should aim at: the promotion and maintenance of the highest degree of physical, mental and social well-being of workers in all occupations; the prevention amongst workers of departures from health caused by their working conditions; the protection of workers in their employment from risks resulting from factors adverse to health; the placing and maintenance of the worker in an occupational environment adapted to his physiological and psychological capabilities; and, to summarize, the adaptation of work to man and of each man to his job”. This standard is based on the methodology known as Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA)
Human resources professionals are assuming health, safety, and security responsibilities within organizations. Such responsibilities include the identification of hazardous conditions and practices, exposure control and mitigation strategies, legal compliance, development of a safety culture, and measurement of health, safety and security program effectiveness.
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