Management of health, safety and wellbeing of employees in the business system

Abstract

Risk assessment and the implementation of measures for a healthy and safe work before the employee starts working, is the basic principle of the prevention of occupational injuries, occupational diseases and diseases related to work.Bearing that in mind, the goal of this paper is to describe the activities of employers and employees in the field of health, safety and wellbeing of employees in a particular business system as well as to measure progress in safety management by analysing data on occupational injuries, occupational diseases and diseases related to work.The research conducted in this paper is based on information and data collected from the public company "Vojvodinašume" and on the description from literature sources. For the purpose of processing the collected data, we used descriptive statistical methods and the data proper are presented graphically and in tabular form in order to facilitate analysis and comparison.Results of the research showed that the number of occupational injuries in the public company "Vojvodinašume" in the period from 2004 to 2013 reduced, particularly the number of minor injuries. However, the public company "Vojvodinašume", in addition to reducing the number of minor injuries, is obliged to eliminate major and fatal occupational injuries, as well as to enable effective prevention of the occurrence of occupational diseases and diseases related to work.

Evaluating Occupational Health and Safety Management Strategy Success Factors for Small-Scale Contractors in Zambia

“…Management strategies in OH&S are defined as a bundle of decisions and acts formulated for the improvement of OH&S performance aimed at improving employee conditions and the environment [4]. Ali et al [10] noted that OH&S management strategies have evolved with time and based on the response to social change, political, technological and economic changes.…”

“…This also laid the foundation of modern day OH&S management systems [6] that brought about the need for education and training in OH&S, duty of care, active establishment of OH&S in organisation and industrial relations. However, each strategy adopted by any firm or nation is dependent on the affinity to improving OH&S performance as there is no acceptable standard internationally on the factors for OH&S [4,8,18]. Nonetheless, there are only guidelines and best practices on the factors from literature that have been used and have helped improve OH&S performance.…”

“…The SSCs are therefore dependent on applying the right kind of management strategy factors that achieve high performance when it comes to OH&S performance improvement [4,9]. Živković, et al [4] noted that as a principle, firms' implementation of OH&S management strategies should be able to entrench OH&S activities that prevents occupational accidents, injuries, and diseases related to the workplace. The growing need for SSCs to formulate strategies that improve OH&S performance practices has made it a pre-requisite to new management practices that work for a particular type of project and industry [5].…”

“…However, there are limited studies in Zambia that embrace the adoption of management strategy as an approach to OH&S performance improvement in the electricity industry, such as the study by Mwanaumo and Mambwe [7] which concentrated on entrenching organizational safety culture and not performance management. Previous studies conducted only addressed management strategy in relation to challenges and benefits, and did not highlight the factors that can be used as management strategies in improving OH&S performance in the electricity industry [4,7,[11][12][13]. While a good number of studies [7,[13][14][15][16][17] have identified success factors critical for management strategy to implement OH&S in other industries and countries, and the improvement of performance in the construction industry, no known study has been conducted on the management strategy success factors for SSCs in the electricity industry in Zambia using the exploratory factor analysis (EFA) through principal component analysis.…”