MANAGEMENT

OF OSH
CIE223 – BASIC OCCUPATION SAFETY & HEALTH
MANAGEMENT OF OSH

• WORKER’S PARTICIPATION
• OSH TRAINING
• KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS
WORKER’S PARTICIPATION
WORKER’S PARTICIPATION

DEFINITION

• Worker’s participation can be defined as “a variety of processes

and structures which enable, and at times encourage,
employees to directly and indirectly contribute to and influence
decision”.
• With respect to the work place, it is seen as any process in the
company that allows workers to exert influence over their work or
their working conditions.
WORKER’S PARTICIPATION
INTRODUCTION

• As an essential element of each occupational safety and health

management system, workers’ participation influences its
effectiveness. Numerous cases and experience confirm that
workers participation in OSH management can result in improved
safety, health and well-being of workers.

• The participation can be implemented as indirect (through

representatives) or direct.
INDIRECT & DIRECT
PARTICIPATION
• Indirect participation means participation through
representatives (who can be works councils, trade unions, or any
other kind of representative).

• Direct participation means participation through employee

involvement. This also means workers or groups of workers get
involved immediately.
• Main forms of direct participation include individual consultation ('face-
to-face' or 'arms-length'), group consultation (in temporary or
permanent groups) and individual or group delegation.
INDIRECT & DIRECT
PARTICIPATION
WHY EMPLOYEE PARTICIPATION
IN OSH MANAGEMENT?
Workers participation in the management of occupational health
and safety is an obligation resulting from legal requirements.

Implementing participation is expected to increase awareness on

OSH issues as well as enhance the employees’ commitment to
health and safety, which will help to:

• Reduce accidents and ill health and the associated costs,

• Develop a positive health and safety culture,
• Increase job satisfaction,
• Increase quality and productivity at the workplace.
OSH TRAINING
OSH TRAINING
INTRODUCTION

Employees are a company's greatest asset an employer has to

assist in achieving business objectives, as well as meeting legal and
moral obligations in providing and maintaining a safe and healthy
workplace. Creating a safe work environment is critical to the
success of your business, and one of the best ways to retain staff
and maximise productivity.

To ensure you get the best out of your employees, it is essential that
they are all provided with appropriate training on all aspects of
their work including health and safety.
OSH TRAINING

OSH training is a great way for employees to learn additional skills

and knowledge and to reinforce quality work practices which will
result in a change in workplace behaviour. Investing in effective
employee training will increase skills, knowledge, productivity and
morale as well as replace and avoid workplace incidents.

OSH training aims at improving the capability, capacity, and

performance of staff, leading to safe and health-oriented behavior,
often linked directly to specific tasks. This is achieved by the
acquisition of knowledge, skills, and competencies.
WHY IT IS IMPORTANT TO
PROVIDE OSH TRAINING?
Although there is the basic instinctive regard for our health and
safety and for others around us, there are many other reasons to
make occupation health and safety a priority in the workplace, this
includes:

• Community expectations that organisations have a responsibility

for those that work for them.
• Legal obligations.
• Insurable costs such as worker’s compensation premium that is
linked to OSH performance.
WHY IT IS IMPORTANT TO
PROVIDE OSH TRAINING?
• Uninsurable costs such as lost time injury and reduced
productivity, staff replacement, retraining costs as well as loss of
business reputation.
• Costs to the community, such as health services, rehabilitation
and loss of skilled labour.
• Costs to employees through reduced quality of life as a result of
workplace injury and disease, reduced income for the injured
and their family and grief by everyone involved.
WHY IT IS IMPORTANT TO
PROVIDE OSH TRAINING?
• A short review can be found in the EU-OSHA (European Agency
for Safety and Health at Work) case study report ‘Worker
participation’:

• The involvement or the participation should start at the risk

assessment stage, because workers and their representatives
have the detailed knowledge and experience of how the job is
done and how it affects them.

• Involvement in the development of preventive measures also

benefits health and safety, but will also improve training, as
workers will be more motivated to discuss and apply the
measures. The combination of training and measures will be
more effective than just one factor.
WHY IT IS IMPORTANT TO
PROVIDE OSH TRAINING?
Setting up successful training schemes needs careful planning.

All those involved in the process need training themselves to get a

clear picture of their roles, to know the requirements, and to
develop the necessary skills and competencies such as how to
consult and involve workers.

Training should be provided to all staff, including the management

and supervisors. Training is a prerequisite for building a
sustainable safety culture within an organization.
KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS
(KPIs)
KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS
(KPIs)
INTRODUCTION
Key performance indicators (KPIs) should provide objective
data on the OSH situation. It is often said that ‘what gets
measured gets managed’.

Without information on OSH performance, no adequate

feedback on actions and policies is available.

The most frequently used KPIs reflect past performance rather

than future performance. There is therefore an increasing
interest in so-called ‘leading indicators’.
KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS
(KPIs)

When KPIs are selected or defined, the most important

considerations are

• OSH relevance,
• management relevance, and
• communicative value.
OSH RELEVANCE

• To be useful as a tool to manage OSH, KPIs should provide

quantitative or semi-quantitative data that reflect the safety and
health issues and activities in the organization.

• These should comprise condensed information on existing

and emerging risks, exposures, and hazards, as well as on
preventive activities to (further) reduce the remaining hazards
and risks.
OSH RELEVANCE

The KPIs should be based as far as possible on objective and

validated measurements; however, some OSH aspects (e.g. safety
climate or worker satisfaction) are difficult to measure entirely
objectively; in such cases, making use of validated surveys or
questionnaires that deliver self-reported data is the best option.
MANAGEMENT RELEVANCE

In principle, it is only useful to measure a performance indicator if

the KPI can be used for decision-making.

• In other words, it is only useful when the measurement has

potential consequences for adapting OSH policies, OSH plans, or
existing practices.
MANAGEMENT RELEVANCE
The relevance of the KPIs increases when they are based on real
time measurements or have a validated predictive value.

• A KPI that is measured every week implies that information

becomes available every week whereupon action can be
taken when necessary.

• If the measurement is only once a year, it can provide

relevant information for an annual OSH plan, but it cannot
have consequences for day-to-day activities and it cannot
be useful in managing acute risks.
COMMUNICATIVE VALUE OF
OSH KPIs
KPIs provide factual information that is relevant to several agents
involved in OSH.

• Managers (at several levels), workers and their representatives,

OSH experts and human resource managers are internal users of
the information.

• OSH KPIs can also be relevant to external communication, e.g.

with business partners, private or social insurance organisations,
or OSH authorities.
LEADING INDICATORS
Leading indicators have predictive value and can therefore be
used to improve OSH management in general, or to intervene in
risky situations before safety or health is affected.
Often they measure factors that are generally regarded as
essential elements of good OSH management.

Examples of leading indicators are:

• the percentage of managers with adequate OSH training;
• percentage of workers with adequate OSH training;
• percentage of management meetings wherein OSH is
addressed;
LEADING INDICATORS
• percentage of OSH suggestions or complaints where feedback is
given to those reporting within two weeks;
• number of ‘precursors’ or ‘early warnings’ recognised (that
precede serious safety problems’;
• prevalence of certain health problems, e.g. as outcomes of
health checks or health surveillance;
• Work Ability Index (predicting the likelihood of early retirement);
• safety climate (survey).
LEADING INDICATORS
• As the examples show, leading indicators tend to focus on the
positive rather than the negative. They focus primarily on actions
undertaken to prevent OSH problems.

• Sometimes whether a KPI is regarded as positive or negative is

more or less arbitrary.

• For instance, a high number of reported dangerous situations

can be regarded as negative (there are too many dangerous
situations), but also as positive (the employees are clearly
motivated to report dangerous situations and trust that the
managers will use the information).
KPIs
• KPIs are important for the effectiveness of the OSH management
process. They provide valuable feedback, help to motivate
managers and organisations to take action, and are valuable for
communication purposes. They are also important for
mainstreaming OSH management in business management.

• The performance indicators most frequently used reflect past

performance; these are valuable, but have limited predictive
value. Leading indicators have a greater potential for improving
OSH, but are more difficult to standardise.

• KPIs should not themselves become an aim and it is important to

keep in mind that they remain a simplification of reality.