Impact of Healthy and safe Environment

Impact of Healthy And Safe Working Environment

Introduction

In the past, the fact that by increasing facilities of health and safety at workstation has positive impact on the level of productivity was ignored and disregarded by policy makers. Researchers and theorists have documented the evidence that there are certain benefits attached to occupational health and safety in term of wastage of time due to injuries, lower wearing and tearing of assets and lower compensation by employees. They also claimed that the most important element for increasing productivity is to modify work station into more safe and healthy place. There has been number of researches conducted to develop an overall better work place along with higher productivity. In these researches, researchers found key indicators which play vital role in increasing productivity at work station such as procedure, structure, traditions followed at work station, behavior of people and lower employee turnover.

Analysis of literature review

In past, the New Zealand government has focused more on compensation system against work station injuries and diseases. Therefore, the issue remains unaddressed which was the cause of higher accident at work station. But now government is funding researches to develop a consensus that healthy and safe environment is critical to increase productivity. However, the relationship between productivity level and healthy and safe environment is not easy to define as there are contradictory opinions. On one hand it is accepted and understood that occupational health and safety facilities do have positive impact on organization's productivity whereas on the other hand, it is believed that implementation of health and safety programs means to increase cost and disturb workflow activities and taken as non-productive investment. William (1997) also argued that the cause and effect relationship between implementation of programs that ensure health and safety of workers at work station and the level of productivity is very complex because there are so many other factors that have impact on the productivity level which are internal and external in nature. Even in case of implementing the health and safety programs there are several other initiatives which will be implementing at the same time that mainly include human resources actions. Therefore, it is difficult to make a strong link between particular initiatives and particular outcome Bergstrom (2005).

Over the years, certain changes are taken place on national and international front which has compelled governments and their agencies to ensure healthy and safe environment at work station. Moreover, these changes have also exposed the impact of unsafe and unhealthy environment on employees in term of mentally and physically.

Discussion

Indicators for measuring OHS

Corporate leadership seems very ambiguous and confuse that what are the measuring tools of accessing the benefits that can be avail by implementing health and safety programs. There is a need to make emphasize that absenteeism, level of disability in term of short term and long term and employees turn over are the tools that should be use to evaluate the impact of health and safety programs on employees ...