Introduction The workplace health and safety
Introduction
The workplace health and safety (WHS) or occupational safety and health (OSH), sometimes also referred to as occupational health and safety (OHS) in short can be called occupational health, is a broad field itself that is concerned with the safety, health, and welfare of people actively participating in the process of production within the working environment. The occupational health and safety definition is again on the other side correctly summarised by W. H. Khan, Mustaq, T. and Tabassum, A. (2014) that “Occupational health and safety (OHS) is a cross-disciplinary area and it is concerned with guarding the safety, health and welfare of people who are engaged in work or employment”. All workers have legal rights at the workplace to expect safe healthy working environment. The health and safety at work place could be seen by business owners as costly exercise and might categorise as an obligation but the real advantage of observing occupational health and safety as mandatory requirements and strictly implementing it at workplace had given rise to productivity and reliability. In order to develop the constructive culture in business settings, the business proprietors have to understand and execute safe workplace as one of the key pillars within their business organisation.
To avoid maximum catastrophe and resulted potential death, majority of business owners would be in a better and advantage side to set up health and safety measures as a priority and making it become compulsory in an organization by aligning it into their business strategic objectives. In order for the business to prosper and making margin profits and to avoid maximum penalties acquired through risk factors, effective occupational health and safety management system has to be integrated to a health and safety anxieties into daily schedules. Nearly all the safety matters are avoidable if only all employees of the organisation are trained properly on safety protocols and procedures and make them well aware of the expected categorical risks and hazards at work place. The ignorance of implementing workplace health and safety as fundamental building block of an organisation results with employee exposed to various risk factors and massive cost incurred to be entirely met by employer as compensation.”The Occupational Health and Safety Administration estimate that employers pay nearly $1 million each week in workers’ compensation costs. Employers are required to have workers’ compensation insurance policies, but injuries increase the basic costs. Also, if an employer is underinsured, the gap of coverage is the responsibility of the employer” (Koplan, 2016). As well occupational health and safety compliances regulations are not strictly executed by the employers, numerous results on safety incidents can be very much regarded as high risk by the monitoring, evaluation and regulatory authority such as insurances companies. Organisations have to encourage collaborative effort from all stakeholders to promote and create compulsory health and safety minded -culture to ensure everyone regardless of their status along the chain of command at the workplace, are encouraged to work together to support and promote health and safety. Therefore, health and safety procedures can greatly help reduce the number of workplace accidents and increase saving cost to the businesses. On the Labour Day, Papua New Guinea (PNG) National Government Minister for Labour and Industry Hon. Mehrra Mine Kipefa said that “the workplaces and workers are the first points of contact for development and their work must be realized and promoted accordingly through highlighting the importance of workers health and safety”. The minister based his statement on Technical Cooperation Initiatives in the Pacific signed between Governments of Fiji and Papua New Guinea (PNG) on April 2011 and it was witnessed at that moment as a landmark technical cooperation program. This program came in the way of bilateral relationship and was intended to improve the standards and practices in the workplace in relation to occupational safety and health (OSH) where PNG was adamant to adopt the health and safety standard practices from Fiji.
The reasons being, health and safety measures in place of work decrease then worker illnesses and injuries matter very much for an organisation. It is imperative to guarantee health and safety education to employees for the good of the business as it will pave way for employees to strictly abiding to workplace procedures to avoid likely damages and illness otherwise contagion from inappropriate sanitation.
As affirmed by Mr. Shukla at lecture on topic health and safety as, “Occupational health and safety is concerned with the profession of a safe and healthy environment, it has to be linked to organisation’s strategic objectives to seek competitive advantage by promoting employee commitment. Poor occupational health and safety performance associate with poor human resources management, poor ethical, legal and social responsibility”. Thus, the case study on Papua New Guinea Liquefied Natural Gas (PNG LNG) US$15.7 billion investment project in terms of implementation of occupational health and safety and compliances will be reviewed and explain the execution of project from start to end during construction phase until it reached the final stage of gas production. Further identify advantages and disadvantages as well as challenges faced by the PNG LNG project in creating and securing safe working environment for employees. Also more in depth thoughts on how can better strategically align other studies done on OHS in past developing nations in oil and gas industries and relate that in respect to PNGLNG project in Papua New Guinea.
Literature Review
There were many studies done in regards to addressing health and safety especially in the oil and gas sector in developing nation like PNG in the past. They were three best fitting OHS surveys done on oil and gas mining industries including, 1.Mozambiqueone of the Sub Sahara African country “the occupational health and safety in petroleum industries within preferred countries in Sub Sahara African SSA countries”, 2.Amet University, a study conducted by an Assistant Professor to Department of Petroleum Engineering on “health and safety hazard management in oil and gas industry”, 3. Kaduna Refining and Petroleum Company “identify employee turnover and absenteeism from active work due to occupational health and safety issues at work place”. All studies were conducted in developing country like PNG which hosted one of the multimillion dollars gas project and the above three occupational health and safety issues were more similar to PNGLNGs’ safety concerns and were selected.
The occupational health and safety in petroleum industries within preferred countries in Sub Sahara African (SSA) countries like Angola, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria and South Africa is generally categorised as the most lucrative industries created single-handedly by oil and gas sector. The sub-Sahara African nation economy depended entirely on gas and oil sector as a potential commodity for those respective countries, and become vital driver to boost their economic development. The region at the same time, petroleum sector attracts deliverance towards poverty reduction and expertises shift. The development attracted negative impact and needed urgent attention to be addressed diligently as an emergency because the project was pronounced hazardous then that gave rise to occupational health and safety confrontations in petroleum industry. Therefore, the oil and gas sector in consultation with the Governments in sub-Sahara African nations had dialogue to strictly follow OHS at mining sites. The classical example is establishment of Occupational Health and Safety Act (OHSA) legislation in South Africa and adherence to it was principally practical protocol for all organisations to follow. Its principal objective was to provide for the health and safety of person who are at work and for the health and safety of persons having connection in utilizing of plant and machinery. The protection of persons other than persons at work against hazards to health and safety arising out of or in connection with activities of persons at work that is to establish an advisory council for occupational health and safety; and to provide for matters connected therewith. The work-related industrial accidents and sicknesses generate economic burden but study showed that mentioned countries in the region were continuously putting extreme efforts to improve strengthen a precautionary measures to face the health and safety challenges. The stakeholders comprise of governments, employees, employers and workers of SAA countries collectively were trying their best to deal with these challenges accordingly by continuously promoting preventative safety and healthy culture in their respective organisations.
Even though most SSA countries have taken multifaceted actions to combat occupational health and safety issues but real challenges cannot be eradicated outright because significant evidences still experienced within the workplaces. The African nations were fully aware of obstacle and setback on implementing OSH legislations. Therefore, oil and gas industry in SSA region was to look outside of the box to have well-organized, flourishing mechanism of approaching the health and safety challenges to reduce the risks at reasonable and manageable level. In summary, organisations had all the ethical, legal and business obligations to provide and make sure their employees are working in the safe and healthy working environment.
Furthermore, there was also another well-established study conducted titled “health and safety hazard management in oil and gas industry” authored by S. Haridoss in 2017, an Assistant Professor to Department of Petroleum Engineering at Amet University. In a petroleum industry it was reported that there was always hydrocarbons present with 40% of all hazardous incidence. Starting from well drilling which was the initial stage to the end where oil and gas wells can discharge a colourless gas with the characteristics of foul odor like rotten eggs, very poisonous, corrosive, and flammable known as hydrogen- sulfide ((H?S) and its chemical formula is made up of one hydrogen molecule and two sulfide molecule having covalently bonded together. The health hazard was generally generated by sulfide gas during well drilling and other service activities engaged within the distance of working diameter had to be dealt carefully with precautions.”The three best practices to help prevent injury and death are: active monitoring for hydrogen-sulfide gas; good planning; and training programs for workers”(Haridoss,2017) to avoid occupational diseases of lung cancer, skin irritation and other sensitive organs like eye and brain can be affected by sulfide gas after long hours of exposure within the working environment. Also when sulfide gas exposed to atmosphere and combines with other atmospheric gases then can become very toxic and sometimes it may result in death if any undiagnosed sickness was present in workers. The different sizes of machine engines can also be possibly produce harmful sounds that are beyond any human hear can accommodate results in permanent noise – induced hearing loss.
However, “often, workers work in difficult conditions such as confined spaces and contaminated environments both of which could prove life threatening if proper training and equipment was not provided for use during working period” (Haridoss,2017). The working office or environment was possible places to acquire other non-communicable diseases like Tuberculosis bacilli (TB) flue to untrained workers.
Interestingly, another study done on oil and gas sector is “known as three multiple regression models respectively that capture the forecast mechanism of yearly total observation (YTO) of Man-Hour Worked for accident, man-hour lost for cost reduction, maintenance trend and Cost Reduction linear Programming (LP) Model at Kaduna Refining and Petroleum Company (KRPC)”(Oladejo and Macauley,2014).These methods were discussed and applied using collated data to identify employee turnover and absenteeism from active work due to occupational health and safety issues at work place. Data from responsible departments such as (Oladejo and Macauley, 2014) “Safety and Environments Department (HSED, Planning Budget and Monitoring Department (PBMD) of KRPC” were generated, gathered, documented and categorized for investigation. Nevertheless, multiple regression model was favoured and ranged best option in this study to do forecasting on annual surveillance (Oladejo and Macauley, 2014) “man-hour worked as a result of accident in the system, man-hour lost as a result of accident which will assist the management in putting resources in place that will reduce cost in the system and maintenance models that will inform progressive routine maintenance plan in the system”. System of cost reduction by predicting yearly total observation using multiple regression models to find out about total number of man –hour worked because of industrial accident in oil and gas industry and exclusively identify preservation and significantly real time in terms of man-hour lost for cost reduction. All calculation methods used to determine avoidable turnover directly impact an organisation when health and safety issues were not taken seriously and addressed thoroughly accordingly. The negative result business face due to injury, there was failure of employees to report to work when they were scheduled to do so. Occasionally the lost time injury, a severe job-related injury that causes an employee to be absent from the job, further affect the work out-put, productivity decrease and strategic business objectives not met as scheduled. The alignment of all these three case studies will further elaborated in a similar case experienced in petroleum sector and discussed in Papua New Guinea Liquefied Natural Gas (PNG LNG) context.
PNG LNG Project
Company background
PNG LNG means Papua New Guinea Liquefied Natural Gas and was delivered within the targeted timeframe with cost valued at US$19 billion connecting pipelines running over 700 kilometres (450mile) through upstream, midstream and to downstream. The pipeline started running from incorporated development of natural gas well pads located upstream in three Provinces specifically Hela, Southern Highlands and Western to the production and downstream processing setup facility at northwest of Port Moresby. The project ships out estimated yearly to be 7.9 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas. It is anticipated to produce over nine (9) trillion cubic feet of gas to be exported to its customers from Asia region, China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation (Sinopec), Osaka Gas Company Limited, JERA Company Inc, and CPC Corporation within the given period. It was a single biggest investment in PNG apart from other mining and cash crop sectors. The development phase was called investment period and was generating revenue and brought widespread economic benefits to households and National Government Budget until the gas was started exporting and only contributed to Government’s budget. Anywhere, during that peak period of construction the government came up with supplementary budget consecutively in two years from 2012 to 2013 to accommodate the surplus revenue generated. Throughout the construction stages there were technical and professional employees recruited all over the world and organizations had ethical, legal and business obligations to provide their employees with a safe and healthy working environment.
Occupational Health and Safety at LNG PNG
The PNG LNG adapted and aligned to the company well with Papua New Guinea established goals and visions on occupational health and safety responsibilities towards its staff and its business partners. Some of the company’s OHS policy that seek out to realize its goals for visions for its OHS performances are “Conduct operations in a manner that safeguards people and property, comply with all applicable law and regulations, reinforce personal accountability for safety and occupational health, not to start with any job until a safe work method has been established, document work procedures for all safety-critical activities and require compliance, encourage employees to intervene or stop work if they observe unsafe behaviour, monitor safety and occupational health performance and analyse all high potential incidents and near-misses for root cause and establish and drill emergency response procedures”(Price, 2012).
At initial phase of construction, every individual employee stressed out beyond the limit as witnessed and experienced as one of the employee working there in LNG PNG for one year it was in 2013. Because all workers were there to meet the set timeline of the company towards the production of gas to facilitate agreement with their interested customers in Asian region, all workers were put on extreme pressure, stress and others cannot work in such environment caught up in sick beds. The stress was due to overwork load and family factors contributed to affected employees’ emotions, thought processes and physical condition. The sources of employees stress were practically endless. Experiencing work overload, that has to be completed and all workers were burn out and they were not at good state of mental, emotional and physical exhaustion that results from substantial and prolong stress. Other contributing factors in stress were shift work, interpersonal relationships change, organizational climate, physical environment and role ambiguity silently came to play major roles in workers’ employment term in PNG LNG.
The operator PNG LNG was fully aware of its full responsibilities gone beyond to hire and provide occupational health and safety specialists to come and train the workers at the time of job design, employee selection and recruitment stages. The company acknowledged, fully supported and monitored the implementation of practice in occupational health and safety (OHS) as part of its job and not just the responsibility of the human resource manager or safety specialist. The human resource managers were at the forefront in promoting safe and healthy work environments and in motivating managers to be alert and accept their responsibilities to train newly introduced staffs to the organization to be employed as causal or permanent has to go through various training in occupational health and safety. As the human resources lecture Mr. H, Shukla (2018) has stated in Health and Safety class that “management’s health and safety responsibility, is to motivate employees to be health safety conscious, ensure compliances with health and safety laws and regulations, monitor OHS performances, training employees to perform their duties and responsibilities in a health and safe way, educating employees about health and safety and provide safe and healthy work environment”. The PNG LNG had the management plan for managing stress by providing Gyms for exercise, game playing fields, provide better food, plan time for resting strictly eight hours of rest and comfortable. Always every morning before the work start having brief “tool box” referred as safety talk, emergency procedures documented and all other required information on health and safety were provided. If there was any emergency in terms of sickness or injuries from workplace surroundings, then there was always health centres established at all camp sites fully facilitated with emergency response kits with well-trained emergency doctors and other experienced health workers stationed in those locations ever ready for treating referred patients from work sites.
Occupational Health and Safety Policy
For any organization to be established as legal institution, firstly there has to be an establishment of attentive plan on how in overall business is going to be managed and in operation to achieve its strategic business objectives. As well, PNGLNG firm had its own established strategically suctioned goals and visions to be achieved under OHS responsibilities and accountabilities towards its workforce and its business shareholders because there is evidence that “Deaths per 100,000 workers – eight times higher than the rate for all U.S. workers. Nearly half of all fatal events in the Oil and Gas extraction Industry resulted from highway crashes (29%) and workers struck by objects and equipment (20%)” N.Chauhan, (2014).The subsequent is an extract of the company’s OHS policy that seeks to accomplish its goals and visions on OHS performances.
PNGLNG had a Safety Management Plan that was aligned with OHSAS 18001 (Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series), a globally used British standard for occupational health and safety management system that is used by all mining organizations internationally to assist them position in place evidently sound OHS performance. The Safety Management Plan try to institute a comprehensible and stable OHS responsibilities and accountabilities as well as leading and covering performance objectives and indicators of the business.
Moreover, PNGLNG consider that focusing on the Areas of Significant Risks would not only prevent fatalities and disastrous events but would concurrently tackle the minor injuries and incidents at the workplace. On the other hand, PNGLNG management has identified hazards in oil and gas industries and separated them into two wide groups where workers are exposed to Safety and Injury Hazards and Health and Illness Hazards. Also the possible causes of risks and sickness were detailed if the employee were exposed to the hazards in oil and gas sector. The diagram in table 1: below shows Safety and Injury Hazards and possible causes in Oil and Gas Sector:
(Sources: Chaun.N, 2014 pp: 4, http://www.wipro.com)
The diagrammatic illustration on table 2 below classifies Health and Illness Hazards in oil and gas sector which most likely causes by agents: “chemical hazards (toxic, corrosive, carcinogens, asphyxiates, irritant and sensitizing substances); physical hazards (noise, vibration, radiations, extreme temperature); biological hazards (virus, parasites, bacteria ergonomic hazards (manual handling activities, repetitive motions, awkward postures); and psychosocial hazards (overwork, odd working hours, isolated sites, violence)” Chaun.N, (2014).
(Sources: Chaun.N, 2014 pp: 5, http://www.wipro.com)
Other risk factors that become significant risks in petroleum industries were; rotating equipment, pressure vessels, energy isolation and lockout, working near water and ground stability.
Normally, PNG LNG values safety, health and well-being of everyone associated with their operations. As a compliance measure, all visitors, business partners and employees are required to undertake a General Safety Induction (GSI) on arrive at PNG LNG. Newly appointed employees were provided with additional OHS training depending on their job specifications and specific work site. Moreover, training on areas including confine space, working at heights, permit systems, rigging, and heavy plant and equipment training is an on-going activity that is highly valued and consistently implemented by the company.
As well, PNG LNG has an inclusive place of work safety program that seeks to connect its workers to be conscious of “safety first” and “staying fit and healthy”. Few of these plans consist of; “National mining safety week – an initiative of the chief inspector of mines each year with targeted OHS activities involving its employees, business partners and mine area communities, iLEAD program – a leadership program aimed to provide visible proactive leadership and commitment to the implementation of OHS policy and standards, Employee Health and Wellness job fitness program – assesses employee against tasks associated with their job description to assist in pre/post medical assessments as well as providing a return to work plan for employees.” These precipitate the understanding of PNG LNG OHS performance in terms of its responsibilities and accountabilities demonstrates how businesses thrives to adopt international principles of OHS management system to plan and execute a responsible compliance practices at the place of work. The three processes in oil and gas industries aim was in terms of occupational health and safety risk assessment as detection, prevention, deploy appropriate control and retrieval management steps. These activities carried out play very crucial role interconnectivity in regards to occupation health and safety and carefully carrying out those practices can better minimize risk in advance stages. Regardless of the unfavourable effects of OHS issues, simple measures can be used to either lessen or eradicate the threats. Nevertheless, detecting OHS issues at an early stage is the most fundamental aspect of dealing with health and safety hazards at workplace.
Prevention is better than treating is a universal statement made all around and it is indeed true in safety judicious. In this context, practicing good work habits and applying appropriate health and safety procedures at workplace can go a long way in offsetting injuries. However, prevention procedures can be widened by taking into consideration the job design part of the workplace, the workers’ health and their body, and the type and nature of work they are involved with. In terms of recruitment of workers into an organisation, the human resource managers can recruit employee who possess, skills, ability and knowledge so that it fit the workers’ job specifications or suitable for the work rather than appointing someone who does know the job. This is to prevent stress; injuries related to job designs and can also amount to blockage to business progressiveness. The important concept at work place like job enlargement, team work and job rotation within the working ranks to promote dynamic work surroundings will certainly decrease the threat of safety vulnerability.
However, the activity of intensification of employee throughout appropriate diet and regular exercises can facilitate the staff handle the job they are positioned. Additionally, organisations have view that detection and prevention could confirm to be necessary component of dealing with health and safety problems at work but it is just as important to engage employees’ in regular side activities that will keep them aware of the importance of health and safety at workplace. Applying uninterrupted teaching and presentation by Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) experts in that particular business setting, enhance the health and fitness programs may be incorporated into the organizations’ strategic and development objectives to scout and retain core healthier employees. However, sometimes Occupational Health and Safety brings good benefits into the organisation encourage healthy growth and at some stages the drawbacks experienced when everything becomes intensified by the nature of working environment.
Benefits of Occupational Health and Safety at workplace
Good awareness to workers’ health and safety has extensive benefits, healthy workers produce cost-effective results; thus healthy workers become a key strategy in business by continue overcoming poor quality practices at workplaces and contribute meaningfully to sustainable progress which is the key pillar to realize strategic business objective of an organisation.
Better planning and implementing occupational health and safety (OHS) programs is always good for organization and also it’s being a key legal and social obligation such as making sure that employees in any size or type of business go home in the same condition that they came to work. The organization with good reputation in observing and implementing best practice in OHS does not prosper unnoticed but determination to get better every day in order to make sure the employees are not harmed or made ill while at workplace at all heights which is an important element of justly exceptional endeavor. These finest performing organisations therefore think that occupational health and safety benefits results become evident as Dr. John Warner an executive coach and management consultant in health and safety stated; “helps demonstrate to all stakeholders that a business is socially responsible, protects and enhances an organization’s reputation and credibility, helps maximize the performance and/or productivity of employees, enhances employees’ commitment to the team/organization as a whole, builds a more competent, happier and healthier workforce, reduces business costs and disruption, enables organizations to meet customers’ OHS expectations, and encourages the workforce in general to stay longer in active life”.
Such companies like PNG LNG is a larger company was expected to abide by a rule of law to the host country (PNGs’) Industrial Safety, Health and Welfare Act 1961, which was further lately amended in 2016 to demonstrate ever-higher standards of corporate governances around risk and safety and greater transparency in reporting process. As large operator in a market driven economy, the importance of be aware of risks by realizing the imperative gain can be completed from integrating well-designed OHS performance into their wider business model and strategies.These wider benefits were able to be achieved through improvements in the image, brand value and wider reputation of the enterprise, delivering on corporate social responsibility (CSR) commitments, maintaining and promoting investor confidence, and developing positive stakeholder engagement at all levels. The benefits of occupational health and safety management systems were highlighted as “it enables Oil and Gas industry in performing hazard identification , risk assessment and implementing various control methods, it ensures well-being of all the employees and thus contributes to a more inspired, and performance driven workforce, regular risk assessment process helps in frequent tracking and monitoring of health and safety indicators (both leading and lagging), reduced costs associated with accidents and incidents, improved regulatory compliance and implementation of OSH management system gives competitive” (Chaun.N, 2014).
Consistency in evaluating and maintaining simple improvements to workplace safety practices can swiftly boost competitiveness, profitability and the motivation of employees. Also implementing and practicing OHS management given rise to offer successful framework to avoid or else reduce mishaps from work related ill-health, thus indicate instantaneous investment return. H. Khan, Mustaq, T. and Tabassum, A. (2014) “An effective approach therefore requires from both senior team and all employees to demonstrate a positive attitude and active commitment to health and safety issues. Of greatest relevance at the earliest stages of this journey are: including OHS as a key issue in wider corporate governance initiatives, ensuring OHS risks are properly identified (in a systematic manner) and adequately addressed by all parties affected (leaders, employees, contractors and suppliers etc.), and actively motivating all teams across the organizations to take OHS matter seriously and keep applying peer pressure by rewarding good results”. Moreover improved personal safety, reduced overheads, insurance claims, insurance premiums, uninsured losses, retraining, relocation, improved productivity, reduced spoilage, wastage, machine shut-down, reduced re-work, compliance with OHS Act requirements, increased trust, morale, job satisfaction, labour turnover, absenteeism, reputation as employer of choice. From every good ending one can’t avoid the opposite impact and its results in occupational health and safety as well has to be precipitated together with benefits.
Challenges in implementing Occupational Health and Safety at workplace
Regardless of the benefits of occupational health and safety to the organisations, there are also significant challenges that organizations had to endure in the implementation of OHS practices. The health and safety weakness at many times come into existence in a way how organisations behave to manage their respective workplace environment. In the workplace, a worker could be vulnerable to risk for illness, injury or even in death. It is always encouraged to work for organisation that consider and carefully implement systemic approach in managing workers and offers ongoing occupational health and safety training.
The specialists expert in executive positions and in command of occupational health and safety are tough tasks to some small business do not have capacity to recruit to work in an organisation because they rare and highly skilled regarded specialist officers. Lack of skills, abilities knowledge and need of worker full partaking also generate an enormous test for a successful execution of OHS plans in any organization. The management’s consistency in embracing OHS also creates hurdle and inefficiencies in the accomplishment of adequate OHS practices especially at planning and decision making levels.
In the workplace, the employees may expose to risks especially for high-risk jobs, its significant decisions at first instant to choose an employer has a capacity to finance a safe working environment. It is moreover important to ensure the employee get enough salary to pay for own hazard insurance and that as to be discussed during the recruitment, selection and interviewing process in order to work with that organisation. The safety matters the most but now a days there is job scarcity, employees make blind decisions assuming that there is health and safety procedures are at work place and strictly monitored. The staff only know about worker’s compensation insurance and in their minds they have assurance that they are totally protected, nevertheless, the employees lack careful judgement and they don’t know that anytime anything might pose risk in their life at workplace. As well the female employees, pregnant mothers, disable people could be in need a special care and will be at greater safety risks if workers don’t understand these sorts of employee need as they require special treatment. In some working environments, it require big machines to do the work and it needs potentially greater built –in risk. The employer will have to first prioritize buying protective gears to safe themselves and others lives before actually commencing work. Also need the training on how to wear all these safety gears all the time when they are at work. It might harm or put the employees at risk so don’t bother work for the employer with ignorance attitude towards observing occupational health and safety by not keeping safety equipment in working condition. The internal environment adverse events are challenges faced within the organisations like “fly-in, fly-out work, sexual harassment, smoking, substance abuse, obesity, depression, home-based workers, workplace violence, domestic violence and workplace bullying” Mr. H, Shukla (2018). Furthermore, the external environment adverse events such as natural disaster, act of war, terrorism attack, sabotage can incur disadvantage so the organisation must have set of safety plans to follow when these external major types of events strike and employees are greatly be affected one way or other. The employers have to come up with four different major respond plans for hurricanes, tornadoes, blizzards, bomb threats and intruder scenarios. If the plans are not there to respond to such emergencies when starting the business, then there is no way any employee can be able to go and work there. It can be summarised that “it is costly to set up a fully functional OHS unit with fully equipped and highly skilled team of experts in the areas of health and safety risk analysis, health and fitness program design and implementation, and having the capacity to respond to emergencies’. H. Khan, Mustaq, T. and Tabassum, A. (2014) but it is wise to align to the strategic business objective at first place to maximize the greater benefits from investment to attract skilful, knowledgeable, experienced employees and maintain the business reputation in long run.
Recommendations and suggestions on how to implement OHS effectively
As the extensive challenges noted from above as experienced within the organizations, every small to large businesses align occupation health and safety as an integral part and include it in a strategic business objective. Make it crucial to carry out risk assessments every day to identify level of possible risks that is going to affect the operation of the organisations. All organisations should have training plan in place to train and educate officers within the organisation in the subject of health and safety so that officer comes back to work from training and manage safety affairs. Internally, if there is no potential officer identified to take up health and safety course through conducting quarterly internal performance appraisal, then recommend for recruiting officer by way of adverting position to attract potential applicant from outside. The trained officer on the theme occupational health and safety must also be promoter for health and fitness for staff as well as expand and apply health, safety and fitness programs for all employees who should also be integrated into the business strategic goals.
The management in its capacity can provide the environment friendly and conducive work place for employees to enjoy working to maintain reputation and gain productivity. At the same time the workers also have to adhere to safety procedures in place and make it become mandatory for their own sake and report any risks identified immediately to responsible officers around the workplace. The employer and OHS officer have to be well versed with host country’s’ labour laws so that all occupational health and safety regulation, procedures and principals were to be adopted from main law. Since the inspectors are going to do inspection from the labour office, it will be beneficial to the organisation having knowledge of health and safety at work place. The organisation always maintains complying values with its accredited standards of occupation and health safety principles adopted.
Likewise, a leader can influence health and safety performance and culture through their actions and behaviours. Therefore, a strong leadership that reflects OHS model of effective health and safety leadership and ongoing commitment and support from executive management of any organization is critical and beneficial to the overall success of an OHS program. As it was stated that “the organization’s management must have clear goals and objectives for the OHS standards, discuss them with their workers, assign responsibilities to designated staff members, and communicate clearly with the workforce” (Haridoss, 2017).The employees where by having daily work plan and meetings involving management at work site to know how to identify and do assessments on OHS programs. At any time the employees can identify and provide relevant information to safety officers if there are any suspicious hazards identified at place of work to reduce or prevent workplace risk factors.
The preparation is as well an imperative component in the occupational health and safety execution practice. This guarantee that employees are well conscious of occupational health and safety and it benefits the company and update with health and safety associated concern at workplace, and values the significance of reporting early signs of OHS hazards. Identifying and assessing workplace health and safety risks before any accidents are most appropriate ways of preventing hazards. On the other hand, likewise significant in early reporting can be able to speed up the work evaluation and step up procedures that can assist avoid or decrease the height of risks. After hazards at work place is identified then can only there are numerous likely solutions to reduce and eliminate workplace health and safety at minimal level according to organisations health and safety management policies and procedures.
Most significantly, a well thought-of review and restorative measures that is compulsory to occasionally appraise the effectiveness of the occupational health and safety development and implementation to make sure its constant growth and enduring achievement. To strongly determine the success of occupational health and safety at work place, the most vital thing to do is developing assessments criteria that should covered under goals and strategic business of that organisation to measure the vision and objective set is achieved.
The diagram below illustrates duty and explanation of an organization’s management towards the acknowledgment and realization of occupational health and safety at workplace.
Figure 1: Management’s health and safety responsibilities (Chaun.N, 2014 pp:7 , http://www.wipro.com)
Conclusion
All workers have legal rights at the workplace to expect safe healthy working environment established by the owner of business. The health and safety at work place can be seen by many organisations as costly exercise and may categorise it as an obligation but the advantage of observing occupational health and safety as mandatory requirements and strictly following it gives rise to productivity and reliability that elevates the dominance as rights. This is best fitting on occupation health and safety survey established to organisations and is seen as way forward. The occupational health and safety hazard management in oil and gas industry is paramount important to safe its workers from risks. The three multiple regression models respectively that capture the forecast mechanism of yearly total observation (YTO) of Man-Hour Worked for accident, man-hour lost for cost reduction, maintenance trend and Cost Reduction linear Programming is imperative model to quantify and substantiate risk management estimation. PNG LNG delivered with cost valued at US$19 billion connecting pipelines running over 700 kilometres (450mile) by strictly adhering and committed to health and safety regulations without any major setbacks because had a Safety Management Plan that was aligned with OHSAS 18001 (Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series). Implementing OHS in work place and strictly implementing daily attracted lot of positive benefits to the organisation. The lack of attention to OHS problems can also be disastrous in any organization where workers health and safety is at stake. Simple measures can be taken to design planning, identification, assess, recording and control risks, follow up on assessments of risks, monitor and review every steps of risk management continuously is appropriate way to minimize the risks. The development in health, safety and fitness programs is the way forward for organizations to maintain fit and healthy workforce in a safe work environment. The greater need for execution of well-organized occupational Safety and Health Management System is significant for improving safety and health performance.
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