Safety Practices Firm Culture And Workplace Injuries

Annotation Workers' Compensation insurance, which covers all medical expenses and part of the lost wages associated with injuries, cost employers $63.9 billion in 2001 (National Academy of Social Insurance, 2004). The indirect costs of accidents lost wages, damage to equipment, training and rehabilitation expenses are several times this amount. On the job injury costs are an important component of the firm's operating expenses. Human resource management can change workers' incentives to take more care on the job (accident prevention), improve workers' incentives to return to work following an accident (loss reduction), and improve workplace efficiency by appropriately involving workers in the firm's decision making.

Despite the fact that workplaces have implemented and followed new safety innovations and approaches, the majority of them have seen little, if any, significant progress in the reduction of accidental deaths and injuries. Changing the Workplace Safety Culture demonstrates that changing the way an organization views and practices safety will impact the behavior of all employees including executive and line managers. It delineates how safety culture change can be implemented and defines the roles of everyone in the safety culture, including management, employees, and unions and their members. Rather than focus on behavior-based safety measures, this book provides step-by-step procedures on how to establish a long-lasting integrated safety management system in any organization. It explores how to change the safety personality of an organization. The author covers the management principles and functions that need to be applied to bring about safety culture change and includes many real-life examples. He goes on to explain the activities needed to implement safety change and the benefits of getting others involved in the safety management system. The only way to ensure that accidents and their consequences are tackled at the source is to identify and eliminate the workplace risks before, rather than after, the event. To be truly effective, safety activities must be integrated into the day-to-day business and become a way of life for management and employees of the organization. This book provides a blueprint for creating an active safety culture that prevents accidents before they occur and becomes the key component in ongoing safety success.

Building on the revolutionary Institute of Medicine reports To Err is Human and Crossing the Quality Chasm, Keeping Patients Safe lays out guidelines for improving patient safety by changing nurses' working conditions and demands. Licensed nurses and unlicensed nursing assistants are critical participants in our national effort to protect patients from health care errors. The nature of the activities nurses typically perform â€" monitoring patients, educating home caretakers, performing treatments, and rescuing patients who are in crisis â€" provides an indispensable resource in detecting and remedying error-producing defects in the U.S. health care system. During the past two decades, substantial changes have been made in the organization and delivery of health care â€" and consequently in the job description and work environment of nurses. As patients are increasingly cared for as outpatients, nurses in hospitals and nursing homes deal with greater severity of illness. Problems in management practices, employee deployment, work and workspace design, and the basic safety culture of health care organizations place patients at further risk. This newest edition in the groundbreaking Institute of Medicine Quality Chasm series discusses the key aspects of the work environment for nurses and reviews the potential improvements in working conditions that are likely to have an impact on patient safety.

Workplace accidents and errors cost organizations hundreds of billions of dollars each year, and the injured workers and their families endure considerable financial and emotional suffering. It's obvious that increasing employee health and safety pays. The accumulating evidence shows that investing in occupational health and safety results in improved financial and social responsibility performance. There are extensive country differences and wide occupational differences in the incidence of accidents and errors. The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that every year there are 2.2 million fatal and 270 million non-fatal accidents or occupational diseases worldwide. Occupational Health and Safety looks at the research into what causes accidents and errors in the workplace. In line with other titles in the series, Occupational Health and Safety emphasizes the psychological and behavioral aspects of risk in organizations. It highlights how organizations differ in their health and safety performance, with case studies throughout and best practices. Key elements focus on: employee selection and training, fostering employee understanding, participation and engagement in health and safety matters, developing a health and safety culture at organizational and group/work unit levels, communicating and reinforcing safe workplace practices and bench-marking one's organization against the industry leaders. The contributors to this volume come from various countries, reflecting unique interest and knowledge in particular areas.

This book presents a step-by-step approach to establishing a safety-first culture. Using a 10-step model, it devotes a separate chapter to each step so readers can easily follow implementation guidelines. Its flexible and proven approach ensures the content works equally well for large corporations and small businesses--and for various members of an organization. While the book centers around how-to create a safety-first corporate culture, it also presents a strong rationale and reasons for organizations to invest in safety.

As leaders increasingly understand the importance of good safety practice to support their business objectives, safety and health practitioners develop better tools and solutions. However, there is still a gulf between these two groups where engagement, communication and shared understanding can be found lacking. From Accidents to Zero opens up the field of safety culture and breaks it down into bite-sized pieces to facilitate new, critical thought and inspire practical action. Based on the concept of creating safety, as opposed to just preventing accidents, each of the 26 chapters in this user-friendly book includes explanation, commentary, reflections and practical activities designed to systematically and sustainably improve workplace safety culture. Core topics range from behaviour to values, daily rituals to unsafe acts, felt leadership to trust. Andrew Sharman's practical guide blends current academic thinking with authoritative guidance and sets up the opportunity for all parts of the organization to close the gap by providing very clear steps to thinking and acting differently. It sparks insight into how both traditional methods and novel approaches can be brought to life in real world situations. From Accidents to Zero offers a clear route to culture change through over one hundred pragmatic ideas to motivate and lead people, influence behaviour and drive a positive evolution in workplace safety.

Provides a clear road map to instilling a culture of safety excellence in any organization Did you know that accidental injury is among the top ten leading causes of death in every age group? With this book as your guide, you'll learn how to help your organization develop, implement, and sustain Safety Culture Excellence, vital for the protection of and improvement in the quality of life for everyone who works there. STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence is based on the authors' firsthand experience working with international organizations in every major industry that have successfully developed and implemented ongoing cultures of safety excellence. Whether your organization is a small regional firm or a large multinational corporation, you'll find that the STEPS process enables you to instill Safety Culture Excellence within your organization. STEPS (Strategic Targets for Excellent Performance in Safety) demystifies the process of developing Safety Culture Excellence by breaking it down into small logical, internally led tasks. You'll be guided through a sequence of STEPS that makes it possible to: Create a culture of excellence that is reinforced and empowered at every level Develop the capability within the culture to identify, prioritize, and solve safety problems and challenges Maintain and continuously improve the performance of your organization's safety culture Although this book is dedicated to safety, the tested and proven STEPS process can be used to promote excellence in any aspect of organizational performance. By optimizing the safety culture in your organization, you will give the people you work with the skills and knowledge to not only minimize the risk of an on-the-job accident, but also to lead safe, healthy lives outside of work.

The objective of this book is to help at-risk organizations to decipher the “safety cloud”, and to position themselves in terms of operational decisions and improvement strategies in safety, considering the path already travelled, their context, objectives and constraints. What link can be established between safety culture and safety models in order to increase safety within companies carrying out dangerous activities? First, while the term “safety culture” is widely shared among the academic and industrial world, it leads to various interpretations and therefore different positioning when it comes to assess, improve or change it. Many safety theories, concepts, and models coexist today, being more or less appealing and/or directly useful to the industry. How, and based on which criteria, to choose from the available options? These are some of the questions addressed in this book, which benefits from the expertise of its worldwide famous authors in several industrial sectors.