HEALTH AND SAFETY

Health and Safety

Health and Safety

Introduction

Health and safety issues are an important concern throughout the world. Employees who work in the United States and out of the states need to feel safe and obtain a sense of security. Before 1970, there were no regulations for safety hazards in the workplace, and no accountability for accidents which occurred on the job. Companies controlled the workforce and the environment. The passing of the Occupational Health and safety Act (OSHA) changed the future for employees. The law gave protection to workforce and forced employers to provide a safe and healthy workplace, plus created accountability (Zwanziger, 2008, 215).

Most employers are mandated by OSHA regulations. Today, safety is a serious concern, and most companies have developed a health and safety program with guidelines for the employees and employers to follow. The following is a variety of four companies with a brief description of their health and safety programs for comparison to determine their effectiveness and uniqueness: (Zwanziger, 2006, 90-111)

Health And Safety Programs

Verizon Communications is a multi-billion dollar corporation and is one of the leading providers of telecommunication service. Verizon considers safety very seriously because they are heavily regulated by OSHA. An intra-company web-site is available to all employees for matters concerning safety. The safety program consists of the following: (Town, 2007, 1170)

Verizon safety creed: The demands of the service are never so great that we cannot take the time to perform our work safely.

Accountability: Supervisors are accountable for preparing employees to fulfill their safety and occupational health responsibilities. Each Verizon employee is accountable for understanding and implementing the safety and occupational health requirements for their job.

Verizon Safety Management Organization: The management safety team provides subject matter on al issues such as: Occupational health and safety matters, health and safety regulatory compliance with OSHA, illness/injury/vehicle collision prevention and hazard identification and control (Robbins, 2008, 562).

Safety Program Components: Verizon safety management develops and distributes health and safety policies, procedures, incident-related safety alerts, safety lesson plans, quarterly national safety awareness bulletins, and updates in the HR Weekly newsletter.

Safety Tools: Verizon provides environment, safety and workforce performance websites, staff conference calls, periodic face-to-face meetings, e-mails, web cast, and video tapes (Jimenez, et al., 2008).

Safety policy

The following information is detailed in the safety policy: Management policy, safety policy, company, workers' comp, general safety rules, vehicle operation rules, employee acknowledgment, management leadership, assignment of authority, implementing safety policies and work rules, employee orientation and training, hazard abatement, commitment to injured workers, injury statistics and reports, record keeping, unsafe accidents, emergency equipment, emergency exits, property damage (Forrest, 2006).

Health and safety programs are fairly similar among the companies describe above. The companies are all mandated by OSHA and have policies in place for reporting procedures. The companies all have a management person assigned to enforcing policies and procedures, and most conduct monthly safety meetings to distribute safety information. All four safety policies summarize employee responsibility and accountability. The companies are unique in the sense that some have extra policies that others do ...