HR and Health & Safety

 

Image source: .staffmanagement.com

What is HR’s role in ensuring the health and safety of workers? 

“Every employee should have the right to show up to work, to do their job successfully, and do it in a safe environment, come home to their family after the work,” says Joey Price. (CEO of Jumpstart HR,) and HR’s role is to ensure that happens.

Given their responsibility for people, culture, and associated policies and procedures, human resource management plays a critical role in supporting workplace health and safety.

HR management has a responsibility to ensure that the organization is in compliance with Health & Safety Act requirements and that supervisors and managers understand that it is their duty to ensure that the workplace is free from recognized hazards that are causing or likely to cause death or serious physical harm.

Management training and evaluation should ensure that managers understand employee rights, including, for example, the right to safety training in a language that the employee understands.

As SHRM-SCP, SHRM president and CEO Johnny C. Taylor, Jr. stated: “Companies and HR should and must do more to make employees feel safe at work,” adding that “If you make the investment in security and preparation, your employees will feel safer and respect you for valuing their safety.”

Success about Safety is much more than meeting compliance requirements, here are 6 key ways HR should be involved in safety.

1. Set the tone during the recruiting and hiring phases

In many ways, the way you recruit and hire sets the tone for workers in terms of your company culture. Are people being recruited and hired who are capable and have the capacity, with training, to do the job? Do you stress to them how important safety is for your organization?

2. Administer and implement the safety program

Depending on your company size, this may or may not be part of HR’s responsibilities directly. Even if HR isn’t solely responsible, they should ideally be involved.

HR’s role in injury and incident prevention can include:

• Culture: ensuring values are upheld and making sure safety is taken as seriously as productivity and results are.

• Policies and procedures: are the policies and procedures upheld? This can make or break any safety program.

• Communication: one of the most critical components is transparent communication and collaboration to make all of this possible. High-performing cultures have a way for people to speak up to support safety, and HR clearly has a connection to this.

• Proper monitoring and updating of a safety program: While starting or re-launching a safety program means you have good intentions, HR is critically important in monitoring and ensuring what should happen, does happen, when it comes to injury prevention efforts.

3. Make sure employees see what’s in it for them

A safe workplace is one of the first things people can take for granted, unfortunately, despite how important it is.

In a society that’s all about “me,” this can be even more challenging, explains Price J; but it’s HR’s role to continue to show how safety and health goals do benefit each individual person.

And HR can help build awareness that it’s up to each employee to take responsibility for their own safety. “There’s so many reasons why people choose to work, and why they choose not to work. Now more than ever, the individual’s needs should be at the forefront of leadership’s mind, because a company is comprised of a collection of individuals,” says Price. In turn, it’s also HR’s role to show the importance of how safety policies and procedures impact co-workers in a company, the company as a whole, and even the community.

4. Champion safety

HR needs to be a champion of safety in the workplace and they need to be one of the leaders of safe workplace initiatives. It means we ensure that have adequate work space, and that they are adequately informed of the mission and goals.

5. Make sure training and development sets workers up for success

HR’s role is to ensure that the organization invests in a proactive safety culture; that investment, when done right, will prevent injuries, incidents, and other issues. A key piece of this is training and development that helps workers to be safe. 

6. Ensure the workplace is committed to overall employee well-being

The “well-being” of an employee is connected to their health and to their safety. “Today, health branches out to not just be our physical health, but it also includes mental health as well. Work is more stressful these days, we take our jobs home with us at night, we carry it in our pocket with our mobiles and laptops. It’s harder to stay disconnected. The idea of “health,” in many ways, has changed for workers, and the role of HR has evolved alongside it, For example: who is more likely to get injured on the job: someone who’s well-rested, alert, and engaged? Or, someone who is fatigued, complacent, and going through the motions? This shows how connected an employee’s well-being is to health and to safety. 

Conclusion 

HR has an essential role to play with workplace safety

Right now, we’re seeing more and more instances that are calling our attention to the idea of, ‘just how safe is the workplace?’ As workplace fatalities are on the rise, it’s just as important as ever. It’s important that HR have the responsibility of getting employees home safely to their family every night. Keeping this is mind, now is a great a time as ever for leaders to re-assess their processes and to make sure your safety programs goes beyond the basics.

An employee lost due to harassment, an employee lost in a fire or chemical spill or injured on the job or anything that is too much bare that could have been prevented with well-planned and practiced health and safety measures.

Reference

iReportSource | 2022.
https://ireportsource.com/blog/what-is-hrs-role-in-safety/#:~:text=HR's%20role%20is%20to%20ensure,helps%20workers%20to%20be%20safe.

Course Sidekick | HR and Health and Safety| 2023.

https://www.coursesidekick.com/management/study-guides/wmopen-humanresourcesmgmt/hr-and-health-and-safety#:~:text=Eliminating%20hazards%2C%20protecting%20workers%2C%20and,commitment%20to%20workers%20and%20others. 

Image source:

https://www.staffmanagement.com/resourcecenter/blog/motivate-employees-to-follow-your-safety-program#:~:text=By%20making%20safety%20a%20priority,safer%20and%20more%20compliant%20workforce.