Occupational safety and health

Occupational safety and health (OSH), also commonly referred to as occupational health and safety (OHS), occupational health, or workplace health and safety (WHS), is a multidisciplinary field concerned with the safety, health, and welfare of people at work. These terms of course also refer to the goals of this field, so their use in the sense of this article was originally an abbreviation of occupational safety and health program/department etc.

The goals of occupational safety and health programs include to foster a safe and healthy work environment. OSH may also protect co-workers, family members, employers, customers, and many others who might be affected by the workplace environment. In the United States, the term occupational health and safety is referred to as occupational health and occupational and non-occupational safety and includes safety for activities outside of work.

In common-law jurisdictions, employers have a common law duty to take reasonable care of the safety of their employees.Statute law may in addition impose other general duties, introduce specific duties, and create government bodies with powers to regulate workplace safety issues: details of this vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

Professional roles and responsibilities

The roles and responsibilities of OSH professionals vary regionally, but may include evaluating working environments, developing, endorsing and encouraging measures that might prevent injuries and illnesses, providing OSH information to employers, employees, and the public, providing medical examinations, and assessing the success of worker health programs.

Europe

In Norway, the main required tasks of an occupational health and safety practitioner include the following:

• Systematic evaluations of the working environment
• Endorsing preventative measures which eliminate causes of illnesses in the workplace
• Providing information on the subject of employees’ health
• Providing information on occupational hygiene, ergonomics, and environmental and safety risks in the workplace

In the Netherlands, the required tasks for health and safety staff are only summarily defined and include the following:

• Providing voluntary medical examinations
• Providing a consulting room on the work environment to the workers
• Providing health assessments (if needed for the job concerned)

‘The main influence of the Dutch law on the job of the safety professional is through the requirement on each employer to use the services of a certified working conditions service to advise them on health and safety’. A ‘certified service’ must employ sufficient numbers of four types of certified experts to cover the risks in the organisations which use the service:

• A safety professional
• An occupational hygienist
• An occupational physician
• A work and organisation specialist.

In 2004, 37% of health and safety practitioners in Norway and 14% in the Netherlands had an MSc; 44% had a BSc in Norway and 63% in the Netherlands; and 19% had training as an OSH technician in Norway and 23% in the Netherlands.

US

The main tasks undertaken by the OHS practitioner in the US include:

• Develop processes, procedures, criteria, requirements, and methods to attain the best possible management of the hazards and exposures that can cause injury to people, and damage property, or the environment;
• Apply good business practices and economic principles for efficient use of resources to add to the importance of the safety processes;
• Promote other members of the company to contribute by exchanging ideas and other different approaches to make sure that every one in the corporation possess OHS knowledge and have functional roles in the development and execution of safety procedures;
• Assess services, outcomes, methods, equipment, workstations, and procedures by using qualitative and quantitative methods to recognise the hazards and measure the related risks;
• Examine all possibilities, effectiveness, reliability, and expenditure to attain the best results for the company concerned

Knowledge required by the OHS professional in the US include:

• Constitutional and case law controlling safety, health, and the environment
• Operational procedures to plan/develop safe work practices
• Safety, health and environmental sciences
• Design of hazard control systems (i.e. fall protection, scaffoldings)
• Design of recordkeeping systems that take collection into account, as well as storage, interpretation, and dissemination
• Mathematics and statistics
• Processes and systems for attaining safety through design

Some skills required by the OHS professional in the US include (but are not limited to):

• Understanding and relating to systems, policies and rules
• Holding checks and having control methods for possible hazardous exposures
• Mathematical and statistical analysis
• Examining manufacturing hazards
• Planning safe work practices for systems, facilities, and equipment
• Understanding and using safety, health, and environmental science information for the improvement of procedures
• Interpersonal communication skills

Differences between countries and regions

Because different countries take different approaches to ensuring occupational safety and health, areas of OSH need and focus also vary between countries and regions. Similar to the findings of the ENHSPO survey conducted in Australia, the Institute of Occupational Medicine in the UK found that there is a need to put greater emphasis on work-related illness in the UK. In contrast, in Australia and the US, a major responsibility of the OHS professional is to keep company directors and managers aware of the issues that they face in regards to occupational health and safety principles and legislation. However, in some other areas of Europe, it is precisely this which has been lacking: “Nearly half of senior managers and company directors do not have an up-to-date understanding of their health and safety-related duties and responsibilities.”