Lecture 7

Employee Safety, Health, and Wellness

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LEARNING OBJECTIVE

At the end of the chapter, you should be able to:

• Explain the nature and role of safety, health, and
wellness.
• Describe the role of the Occupational Safety and Health
Administration.
• Explain the issues of safety unique to small businesses.
• Summarize the economic impact of safety.
• Explain the focus of safety programs.
• Describe the purposes of wellness programs and
explain social networking and wellness.
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The Nature and Role of Safety and Health

• Safety:
 Protecting employees from injuries caused by
work-related accidents.

• Health:
 Employees' freedom from physical or emotional
illness.

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Occupational Safety and Health Administration

• Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 created

Occupational Safety and Health Administration
(OSHA).
• Aims to ensure worker safety and health in U.S.
• Works with employers and employees to create better
working environments.
• Requires employers to provide safe and healthy place
to work.

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General Duty Clause

• Employers have responsibility to furnish a workplace

free from recognized hazards that are causing or are
likely to cause death or serious physical harm.

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Results from OSHA

• OSHA helped cut workplace fatalities by more than

60% and occupational injury and illness by 40%.
• At the same time, U.S. employment has more than
doubled, from 56 million workers at 3.5 million work
sites to 125 million workers at more than double the
number of work sites.

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Mission of OSHA

• Promote and assure workplace safety and health and

reduce workplace fatalities, injuries, and illnesses.

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Possible Financial Penalties

• Serious hazard citation has maximum penalty of

$7,000.
• Willful citation might have maximum amount of
$70,000 per violation.
• If 10 employees were exposed to one hazard the
employer intentionally did not eliminate, penalty
amount would jump to $700,000 .

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Those Who Repeatedly Violate Health and Safety Standards

• Severe Violator Enforcement Program.

• Increases inspections at worksites where “recalcitrant
employers” have repeatedly violated safety
regulations and endangered workers.

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Training Program: Employment Compliance

• OSHA is charged with more than just enforcing

retaliation charges related to health and safety.
• Enforces whistleblower protection provisions for 21
statutes, covering not just workplace safety.
• Prohibits discharging or retaliating against any
employee because employee has exercised rights
under OSHA.

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OSHA and Small Business

• Providing safe environment is also important for

small businesses.
• OSHA provides help for small businesses.
• On-site consultation service.
• Helps small business owners improve their workplace
safety and health.

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Safety: Economic Impact

• Job-related deaths and injuries extract high toll in

terms of human misery.
• Significant costs passed along to consumer.
• Everyone affected (directly or indirectly) by deaths
and injuries.

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Focus of Safety Programs

• Safety programs may accomplish their purposes by

addressing:
 Unsafe employee actions
 Unsafe working conditions
Deep fryer Dangers - Bloody Lucky (bloodylucky.ca)

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Unsafe Employee Actions: Prevention

• Create psychological environment and employee

attitudes that promote safety.
• Training and orientation of new employees
emphasizing safety.
• Attitude must permeate the firm’s operations.
• Strong company policy emphasizing safety and
health.

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Reasons for Management Support of Safety Program

• Personal loss
• Financial loss to injured employees
• Lost productivity
• Higher insurance premiums
• Possibility of fines and imprisonment
• Social responsibility

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Job Hazard Analysis

• Key to determining and implementing necessary

controls, procedures, and training.
• Multistep process designed to study and analyze task
or job, then break down task into steps to eliminate
associated hazards.
• Can have major impact on safety performance.
• OSHA publication on job hazard analysis.

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Superfund Amendments Reauthorization Act, Title III (SARA)

• Requires businesses to communicate more openly

about hazards associated with materials they use and
produce, and wastes they generate.
• SARA has been around since 1986.
• Hazard communication standard often leads the list
of OSHA violations.

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Developing a Safety Program

• Employee involvement: Gives sense of accomplishment.

• Safety engineer: Staff member who coordinates overall safety
program.
• Accident investigation: Safety engineer and line manager
investigate accidents.

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Injury Frequency Rate

• Number of Recordable Injuries / 200,000 (The

200,000 is the equivalent of 100 full-time employees
working 40 hours per week, 50 weeks a year.)

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Musculoskeletal Disorders

• Conditions that affect the body’s muscles, joints,

tendons, ligaments, and nerves.
• Cost U.S. companies $61.2 billion annually just to
cover lost productivity.

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Carpal Tunnel Syndrome (CTS)

• Caused by pressure on median nerve that occurs as a

result of narrowing of passageway that houses the
nerve.
• Develops in people who use their hands and wrists
repeatedly in same way.
• CTS is preventable, or at least its severity can be
reduced.

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Ergonomics

• Process of designing workplace to support

capabilities of people and job/task demands.
• Goal is to fit machine and work environment to
people.
• Attempts to structure work conditions so they:
 Maximize energy conservation
 Promote good posture
 Allow workers to function without pain or
impairment

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Bullying and Workplace Violence

• OSHA defines workplace violence as:

 Physical assault
 Threatening behavior
 Verbal abuse
 Hostility or harassment

• 1.7 million workers are injured each year, and more

than 800 die as result of workplace violence.

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Bullying and Workplace Violence

• Bullying is acts of workplace conduct that deliberately

hurt another person.
• Bullying can hurt people in different ways:
 Emotionally
 Verbally
 Physically
Workplace Violence Examples

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Vulnerable Employees

• Among the most vulnerable:

 Employees at gas stations and liquor stores
 Taxi drivers
 Police officers
 Convenience store managers working night shifts

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Domestic Violence

• Unexpected threat in workplace, both to women and

companies.
• Easiest place to find victim is at his/her workplace.
• Can have impact on firm’s bottom line.

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Legal Consequences of Workplace Violence

• Civil lawsuits claiming negligent hiring or negligent

retention.
• Negligent retention: Company keeps persons on
payroll whose records indicate strong potential for
wrongdoing, and fails to take steps to defuse possible
violent situation.
• OSHA’s general duty clause.

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Laws Related to Domestic Violence

• Family Violence Prevention and Services Act: Helps

prevent domestic violence and provide shelter and
victim assistance.
• Violence Against Women Act: Created federal
criminal laws and additional grant programs within
HHS and Department of Justice.
• Violence Against Women and DOJ Reauthorization
Act: Mandated study of prevalence of domestic
violence, dating violence, sexual assault, and stalking
among men, women, youth, and children.
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Individual and Organizational Characteristics to Monitor

• Certain behaviors can signal a problem, such as:

 Erratic behavior
 Increased irritability or hostility
 Reduced quality of work
 Poor organizational and time management skills
 Absenteeism
 A look of physical exhaustion

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Preventive Actions

• Two parts to violence prevention:

 Process in place to help with early detection of
worker anger.
 Supervisors and HR staff need to be trained in how
to skillfully handle difficult employment issues.

7 Tips to Prevent Workplace Violence

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Employee Wellness

• Traditional view: Health is dependent on medical care

and is simply absence of disease.
• View is changing.
• Optimal health can be achieved through
environmental safety, organizational changes, and
healthy lifestyles.
• Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) provide the
structure within which companies offer wellness
initiatives.

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Social Networking and Wellness

• Employers increasingly are adopting social

networking to strengthen wellness programs.
• Social networking brings employees together and
works to increase peer support.

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Nature of Stress
• Body’s nonspecific reaction to any demand made on
it.
• Potential consequences include diseases that are
leading causes of death.
• May even lead to suicide.
• Stressful jobs include lack of employee control over
work.

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Burnout
• Individuals lose sense of basic purpose and
fulfillment of work.
• Body or mind can no longer handle overwhelmingly
high demands.
• Costs: Reduced productivity, higher turnover.
• Individuals in helping professions seem to be most
susceptible to burnout.
• Danger: It is contagious!

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Physical Fitness Programs
• Most commonly offered in-house corporate wellness
programs involve efforts to promote exercise and
fitness.
• Reduce absenteeism, accidents, and sick pay.

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Substance Abuse
• Use of illegal substances or misuse of controlled
substances.
• Between 10 and 20% of nation's workers who die on
the job test positive for alcohol or drugs.

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Alcohol Abuse
• Medical disease characterized by uncontrolled and
compulsive drinking that interferes with normal life.
• 40% of workplace fatalities and 47% of workplace
injuries are related to alcohol consumption.

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Drug Abuse
• Drug users are increasingly gravitating to the
workplace, which is also an ideal place to sell drugs.
• Substance abusers are three-and-a-half times more
likely to be involved in a workplace accident.

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Substance-Abuse-Free Workplace
• Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988
 Requires some federal contractors and all federal
grantees to agree they will provide drug-free
workplaces.
 Condition of receiving a contract or grant from a
federal agency.

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Steps for Establishing a Substance-Abuse-Free Workplace

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Substance Abuse Testing
• Most employers use urine testing.
• Experts regard blood tests as forensic benchmark
against which to compare others.
• Hair sample analysis can detect drug use from 3-90
days after.
• Oral fluid testing is well-suited to cases of
reasonable suspicion and to post-accident testing.
• New method able to detect drugs and other
substances from sweat in fingerprints.

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Employee Assistance Programs (EAP)
• Comprehensive approach to deal with numerous
problem areas such as:
 Burnout
 Alcohol and drug abuse
 Other emotional disturbances

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Employee Assistance Programs (EAP)
• Drug-Free Workplace Act of 1988 requires access to
EAPs for federal employees and employees of firms
with government contracts.
• Primary concern is getting employees to use
program.

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Healthcare in the Global Environment
• Safety and health laws and regulations often vary
greatly from country to country.
• Vary greatly in their state of modernization.
• Growing number of expats are being sent to
emerging markets.

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Internal Employee Relations
• It includes the actions of promotion, transfer,
demotion, resignation, discharge, layoff, and
retirement.
• It also includes discipline and disciplinary action
because of the possible impact of disciplinary
measures on employee relations.

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Employment-At-Will
• It is an unwritten contract that is created when an
employee agrees to work for an employer.
• There is no agreement in terms of how long the
parties expect the employment to last.
• It is a legal doctrine which specifies that
employment may be terminated by either the
employer or employee for any reason.

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Approaches of Disciplinary Actions
• Hot stove rule
• Progressive disciplinary action
• Disciplinary action without punishment

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Approaches of Disciplinary Actions
• Hot stove rule:
 Burns immediately – take disciplinary action to
immediately to ensure individual will understand
the reason for it.
 Provides warning – provide advance warning that
punishment will follow unacceptable behaviour.
When individuals move closer to a hot stove, its
heat warns them that they will be burned if they
touch and they can choose to avoid the burn.

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Approaches of Disciplinary Actions
• Hot stove rule:
 Gives consistent punishment – Everyone who
performs the same act will be punished
accordingly. As with a hot stove, each person who
touches it with the same degree of pressure and
for the same period is burned to the same extent.
 Burns impersonally – Disciplinary action should
be impersonal. The hot stove burns anyone who
touches it without favouritism.

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Approaches of Disciplinary Actions
• Progressive disciplinary action:
 It is intended to ensure that the minimum
penalty appropriate to the offence is imposed.
 The goal is to formally communicate problem
issues to employees in a direct and timely
manner so that they can improve their
performance.
 Some firms have formalised the procedure to
assist their managers in recognising the proper
level of disciplinary action.
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Approaches of Disciplinary Actions
• Progressive disciplinary action:
 A worker who is absent without authorisation will
receive an oral warning the first time it happens
and a written warning the second time
 The third time, the employee will be terminated.
Fighting on the job is an offence that normally
results in immediate termination.
 Specific guidelines for various offences should be
developed to meet the needs of the organisation.
How to apply progressive discipline to address
employee performance problems 51
Approaches of Disciplinary Actions
• Disciplinary action without punishment:
 The process of giving a worker time off with pay
to think about whether he or she wants to follow
the rules and continue working for the company.
 For example, when an employee violates a rule,
the manager issues an oral reminder. Repetition
brings a written reminder, and the third violation
results in the worker having to take one, two, or
three days off (with pay) to think about the
situation.
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Approaches of Disciplinary Actions
• Disciplinary action without punishment:
 During the first two steps, the manager tries to
encourage the employee to solve the problem.
 If the third step is taken, upon the worker’s
return, the worker and the supervisor meet to
agree that the employee will not violate rules
again or the employee will leave the firm.

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Approaches of Disciplinary Actions
• Disciplinary action without punishment:
 When disciplinary action without punishment is
used, it is especially important that all rules are
explicitly stated in writing.
Managing employee misconduct | The disciplinary
process

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THE END