Safety Health And Environment Drawings

Common Health and Safety Policies in the Workplace

CC0/oli2020/Pixabay

The purpose of health and safety policies in the workplace, as set by OSHA (the Occupational Safety and Health Administration), are six-fold:

To prevent injuries and illnesses arising from the workplace
To improve compliance with relevant regulations and laws
To reduce the associated costs, such as compensation
To engage workers
To enhance workers' social responsibility
To increase productivity in the workplace and streamline operations

However, the basic idea is simple: To prevent, rather than to react to, hazards in the workplace.

Some common health and safety policies, or core approaches to occupational health and safety, are outlined below—with respect to the areas they pertain to.

Management Leadership

A commitment to employee health and safety should come from the very top levels of management. A policy to share that commitment with employees through comprehensive health and safety information should be adopted. This means putting in place a clear health and safety plan template. In other words, employees should be aware of management's expectations and responsibilities, in accordance with OSHA guidelines. Managers at all levels should also provide resources to promote employee health and safety, allowing everyone in the company to follow suit.

Worker Participation

It is important that workers are involved in setting goals, identifying and reporting hazards and tracking progress generally. This will help to ensure that employees are proactive about understanding their responsibilities and, importantly, the reasoning behind them. Of course, they should also be fully aware of how to fulfill their responsibilities, including the resources available to help them do so.

It's also important to have a clear policy of openness for reporting incidents and an easy means by which to do so. For that reason, any obstacles should be removed.

Hazard Identification, Assessment, Prevention and Control

In addition to a policy of assessing existing hazards, there should be clear procedures for identifying and evaluating risks on an ongoing basis. To this end, employers and employees should cooperate effectively to devise appropriate measures for controlling hazards in the workplace.

Over time, it's also important to periodically assess the usefulness of these procedures and policies. Evaluation should be part of the plan, as should verify that the plan is actually being followed.

Education and Training

A policy of health and safety training is integral to any overall plan. Initial and periodic health and safety quizzes are one means by which this can be accomplished. In particular, such quizzes can be useful to promote awareness of how to recognize hazards in the workplace. They can also help management to assess where there may be room for improvement. The idea is to ensure that all employees understand how the program works, and what their specific responsibilities are.

Coordination and Communication Between Worksites

Where a company operates multiple worksites, it's especially important for the host employer and all contract employers to coordinate on planning. A policy should be set up to schedule meetings to identify and resolve health and safety issues. Equally, workers from both parties should be informed (and assessed for their knowledge of) hazards at each of the worksites they may work at.