What is occupational health and safety

What is occupational health and safety? | FAQs

Occupational health and safety (OHS) is a concept that affects every organisation, but you need to understand the basics in order to inform your safety management strategy effectively.

OHS, or Occupational Health and Safety, is a multidisciplinary practice dealing with all aspects of health and safety in the workplace, with a strong focus on preventing workplace hazards.

The enjoyment of these standards is a basic human right that should be afforded to each and every worker, regardless of the nature of their work. With OHS standards in place, workers are able to carry out their responsibilities in a safe and secure working environment, free from hazards. The best part is that you don’t even have to hire someone new to do the job. You can invest in occupational health and training for your current staff.

Watch Christian Basgen, Head Tutor on the University of Cape Town Occupational Health and Safety online short course, as he expands on what you need to know about OHS.

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When it comes to OHS we are referring to health and safety in the work environment which everyone is affected by. When it comes to safety, very often we are talking more about injuries which are caused by machinery, falls, slips and broken bones. When it comes to health, we are talking as well about psychological health and diseases, anything stress related and environment related.

Why is Occupational Health and Safety Important?

Do you find yourself overwhelmed by Health and Safety (H&S) in the workplace? You’re probably not the only one. Although it may seem confusing to begin with, Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) is extremely valuable and is rightly being incorporated into more and more workplaces around the world.

For that reason, it’s important to break it down and begin to understand exactly what Occupational Health and Safety is, and why it’s so important. In today’s article, we’ll explain exactly what EH&S is, how everybody can benefit from it, and why some of the safety courses offered by our Safety & Access team can be beneficial to all.

What is Occupational Health and Safety?

Let’s keep it simple. Occupational Health and Safety is designed to create a safe, healthy work environment. It can generally be considered as two separate entities.

Occupational Safety covers the risk factor in your workplace, and potential safety hazards that could possibly cause injury. Occupational Health, on the other hand, looks at potential health concerns and wellbeing. Think of Safety as an employee’s physical well-being, and Health as everything else, including mental health.

Whether you’re stacking shelves, studying a PhD, working from an office, or using heavy machinery, there are health and safety risks. That being the case, your employer has a responsibility to minimize those risks and reduce the likelihood of any workplace accident or mistreatment. And, as we’re about to explain, it’s in more than just their legal interest to look after you.

Why Occupational Health and Safety is Important

Mental Health and Well-Being

Your employer must consider the conditions you work in. OH&S puts a care of duty upon every employer to make sure that their staff work in reasonable conditions, and that their mental health is a top priority.

Long hours, few breaks, little recognition, and impossible demands will quickly leave staff fatigued, stressed, and suffering from poor mental health. At best, workers will suffer slight mental health problems and only require a break from work. At worst, this could lead to life-changing and long-term mental health problems.

Companies want to make sure that their staff are mentally healthy and contributing to the business. OH&S makes sure that staff health is looked after.

Increased Awareness and Safe Working Culture

You don’t spend thousands upon thousands of pounds putting your staff on mandatory training courses just for the sake of it. OH&S training courses, all the way from Working at Height to Supply Chain Management, are all designed to create awareness of workplace surroundings and create a safe working culture.

This sounds good on paper, but it’s even better in practice. Once they’ve completed the relevant OH&S training courses, staff will work in a much safer way, and will understand how to minimise workplace risk. As they learn to avoid hazards and raise concerns about potentially dangerous tasks, workplace-related injuries will reduce.

This keeps workers safe and improves trust throughout industry.

Increase in Productivity

Healthy staff are productive staff. When OH&S is implemented correctly, staff should feel protected, and loyal to their work. They know that they’re being looked after while they’re at work, and that they won’t be putting their safety or their health at risk.

This is also significant because when staff speak up and raise concerns about a potentially hazardous task, they do so in the knowledge that their opinion will be listened to and considered. Colleagues trust one another and, with a positive mindset, will work efficiently. Fail to protect your staff with the appropriate OH&S measures, and you’ll only see your staff retention rate decrease.

Correct Training and Use of Tools

Particularly on some of our Scaffolding Training Courses, our experts explain that shortcuts will always create workplace risks. This is true in just about every industry, but when heavy machinery is involved, the risk is much more significant.

When OH&S training is carried out correctly, staff know how to use the tools that are required for their job. Injuries are less likely to occur, and the work will be carried out to a higher standard as well. You’ll have highly trained staff and a reduction in man-hours lost to injury and illness.

New Opportunities

OH&S will also create new opportunities in your workplace. Staff that have been trained can take on the responsibility of becoming mental health ambassadors, setting a good example and serving as a point-of-contact for their colleagues.

For others, OH&S also creates the opportunity to share success stories and examples of best practice. Staff can also be recognised for fine examples of OH&S in the workplace, and by highlighting examples of best practice, the culture of health and safety at work will only improve.

Occupational Health and Safety with Safety & Access

Ultimately, Occupational Health and Safety will look after both your employees and your profits. In the past, too many workers have suffered tragic losses – OH&S strives to make workplace accidents a thing of the past.

Our Safety & Access team are professional, patient, and fully certified OH&S training course leaders. They can explain exactly what OH&S involves, and why its benefits are so significant. We’re local to your area – contact our team today to find out how you can keep your staff productive and, most important of all, safe.

What Is Occupational Health and Safety?

Jason DelCollo, DO, is board-certified in family medicine and on the faculty of Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine.

Marley Hall is a writer and fact checker who is certified in clinical and translational research. Her work has been published in medical journals in the field of surgery, and she has received numerous awards for publication in education.

Safe and healthy workplaces are often taken for granted in the United States. But today’s safety-conscious factory floors and well-lit offices are a relatively recent invention of modern society—a direct result of efforts made by those working in the field of occupational health and safety.

Dedicated to studying and preventing workplace injuries and illnesses, the field of occupational health and safety is responsible for the overwhelmingly-positive outcomes achieved for American workers over the past 200 years.

Dangerous machinery and poorly ventilated factories, once commonplace, have made way for safer, cleaner environments for employees. The combination of legislation, executive branch regulation, and self-regulation by responsible businesses has transformed the American workplace.

As a result, accident and fatality rates across most industries have dropped steadily for decades—a trend that continues even today.

Definition

Occupational health and safety is the field of public health that studies trends in illnesses and injuries in the worker population and proposes and implements strategies and regulations to prevent them. Its scope is broad, encompassing a wide variety of disciplines—from toxicology and epidemiology to ergonomics and violence prevention.

Historically, the focus of occupational health and safety efforts have been on manual labor occupations, such as factory workers. But the field now encompasses all occupations in the United States.

In addition to ensuring our work environments (from construction sites to office buildings) have safety precautions in place to prevent injuries, experts in occupational health also work to limit both short-term and long-term hazards that could lead to physical or mental illness now or in the future.

Nearly three million people suffer some kind of serious work-related injury or illness every year in the United States. Millions more are exposed to environmental health hazards that could cause issues years from now.

Workers’ compensation claims total more than a billion dollars a week. That doesn’t even account for the loss of wages and other indirect expenses, such as decreased productivity and the psychological toll of experiencing or caring for someone with an injury.

With the exception of self-employed individuals and relatives of farmworkers, nearly all employers both private and public have a social and legal responsibility to establish and maintain a safe and healthy environment.

Some are happy to comply for ethical reasons or because injuries and illnesses can lead to lost productivity, turnover, and higher employer-subsidized health insurance premiums. It is common for larger employers to establish their own workplace health and safety initiatives that exceed regulatory requirements.

History

The idea that workplaces in the United States should be required to adhere to a minimum set of safety and health standards isn’t all that controversial—but it wasn’t always that way.

Working conditions for the average American have improved in fits and starts over the last 150 years, with major economy-altering safety legislation passed and a steady stream of various lesser regulations enacted under both major U.S. political parties in recent decades.

In the wake of the Civil War, factories started to crop up all across the United States. Often staffed by young, highly inexperienced workers, the factories were perilous places to work.

Stories compiled in an 1872 report by the state of Massachusetts’ Bureau of Labor detailed many grisly incidents where workers lost limbs or were killed due to inadequate equipment and physically demanding tasks.

In addition to the dangerous equipment and machines, the facilities were dirty and poorly ventilated. Opening windows would reportedly disrupt the materials inside the factories, so they remained closed, leaving workers to breathe in chemical fumes and accumulated dust day in and day out.

In response to the 1872 report and compiled statistics, Massachusetts became the first U.S. state to require factory inspections that included verifying, among other things, fire exits were in place at each facility. Other states quickly followed suit. By 1890, 21 states had some kind of law in the books limiting health hazards in the workplace.

While these efforts were a step in the right direction, it was a messy assortment of laws and regulations. Rules differed from state to state and weren’t always enforced.

States with more relaxed policies attracted businesses away from stricter states, and a push was made to scale back regulations. A back and forth progression began as the public demanded stricter laws and businesses fought to loosen them.

The piecemeal assortment of regulations finally came to a head in December of 1970 when then-President Richard Nixon signed into law the Occupational Safety and Health Act, becoming the first far-reaching federal law to protect American workers.

The law gave the U.S. government authority to write and enforce safety and health standards for nearly all of the country’s workforce. Shortly after, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was established to oversee the implementation of the new law.

Improvements and additions to state and federal laws have been passed in the years since, expanding the role of occupational health and safety professionals and going further to ensure safe workspaces for all. Now, if you get injured on the job, you won’t go bankrupt thanks to workers’ compensation.

Legal recourse is available against negligent or unsafe employers. Inspection and oversight regimens help identify unsafe conditions. And modern data-driven workplace safety programs proactively identify risks and help employers tackle the underlying conditions that put workers in danger in the first place.

While it’s difficult to estimate the true impact of the law—we don’t have a lot of data on workplace safety from the pre-OSHA days—it’s estimated that the total number of workplace fatalities has decreased by more than 65%, despite dramatic increases in the country’s workforce.

Current Issues

The issues studied and regulated by occupational health and safety experts today vary widely by occupation. For example, physical threats like tall heights and heavy machinery might be of greater concern to construction workers, whereas mental health and repetitive stress injuries might be the focus of office environments.

Even so, despite massive improvements to workplace standards, there are a number of safety and health concerns in America’s workforce where much work can be done.

Falls

Hundreds of workers in the United States die from falls incurred on the job each year. While these incidents are almost entirely preventable, falls are the leading cause of fatalities among construction workers.

For many builders, working from tall heights is unavoidable, but with proper safety precautions, deaths and injuries can be avoided. These precautions should start before the work even begins during the earliest part of the planning stages.

Employers should include the cost of safety equipment, like harnesses, scaffolds, and fall arrest systems, into the project’s work estimate, so that every worker has access to and is trained to use the equipment they need.

Heat Illness

According to OSHA, dozens of workers die every year from working in extreme heat or humid conditions, and thousands more become ill. The biggest proportion of these instances happen in the construction industry, but it can happen to anyone working in an environment that isn’t properly climate controlled.

Employers are legally obligated under federal law to ensure that work environments are free from safety hazards. That includes extreme temperatures.

For its part, OSHA is encouraging business owners and managers to protect their workers from heat-related illness and injury through a messaging campaign that encourages them to provide water, rest, and shade to all employees—especially when the heat index is 91 degrees Fahrenheit or higher.  

Repetitive Stress Injuries

An emerging area of concern related to occupational health is injuries caused by poor posture and repetitive motions. Many U.S. workers work almost exclusively on computers, mousing and typing for hours on end, resulting in the overuse of certain muscles and joints.

This type of repetitive activities day in and day out can cause injuries, such as carpal tunnel syndrome and even eye strain.   The tendency of modern workers to also use poor posture while using electronic devices (both on and off the clock) can also contribute to long-term pain, lost productivity, and medical costs. 

Many employers find that investing in ergonomics and office-based safety initiatives (such as targeting slips, trips, and falls) actually has a positive return on investment once lost productivity and employer medical costs are considered.

Sedentary Behavior

As the workforce has moved from manual labor to desk jobs, the U.S. population has become increasingly sedentary. Office workers often sit for hours at a time during work hours—not to mention during their daily commute and leisure time.

But a sedentary lifestyle can have major consequences for your health, including increasing your risk for obesity, blood clots, and death.

Only 53.3% of American adults get the recommended amount of aerobic physical activity and only 23.2% get both enough aerobic and muscle-strengthening activity each week. Even that, however, might not be sufficient to stave off the risks of being tied to a desk.

One study found that those who sat for a cumulative 12.5 hours per day (not outside the realm of possibility for commuting office workers who like to relax on the couch) were more likely to die from all causes than those who were more active, moving around at least every 30 minutes.

This was the case regardless of whether individuals worked out regularly. Sitting for too long too often can have devastating consequences over time.

Non-Fatal Injuries

Many people envision workplace safety primarily in terms of traditionally risky industries like construction, deep-sea fishing, or logging. Indeed, these sectors experience some of the highest fatal accident numbers for U.S. workers. 

However, non-fatal injuries and illnesses tell a significantly different story. These injuries can result in significant losses to productivity, as more than half of these injuries result in days away from work—not to mention the added burden of treatment costs and human pain.

Frequently Asked Questions

You can request a representative of OSHA inspect your workplace to determine if there are any safety violations. A worker or someone who represents them can make this request or file a complaint about a working environment.

Dangers vary by industry. There are six types of hazards: biological, chemical, ergonomic, work organization, safety, or physical. Some specific situations that make workplaces unsafe include fall hazards (wet floors, ladders, etc.), eye strain, fire risks, poor air quality, and heat.

What is occupational safety and health? Definition and meaning

Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) is concerned with the health, safety, and welfare of employees in the workplace. We also call it Occupational Health and Safety (OHS), Workplace Health and Safety (WHS), and Occupational Health.

Apart from fostering a healthy and safe work environment, the term also includes the protection of co-workers and family members. In some cases, OSH may include customers, employers, and other people who the workplace environment may affect.

“In the United States, the term occupational health and safety is referred to as occupational health and occupational and non-occupational safety and includes safety for activities outside of work.”

Companies and other employers, in common-law jurisdictions, have a legal duty to take reasonable care and safety of their workers. State law usually introduces specific duties and creates government bodies that regulate workplace safety issues.

When referring to a specific case of a workplace injury, we use the term occupational injury.

Occupational Safety and Health concerns everybody

OSH concerns both employers and workers. Our workplaces have several different kinds of hazards. Every year, millions of workers globally are injured, disabled, or die on the job.

According to the National Safety Council, a 501 nonprofit, public service organization promoting health and safety in the United States:

“The costs associated with injuries and illnesses, lost wage compensation, insurance premiums, hiring replacement workers, damaged equipment, and lost production are immense expenses for businesses and the economy in general.”

Many companies, especially the larger ones, have a team of professionals with experience and degrees in occupational safety and health.

However, for most smaller employers, the task of creating and implementing illness and injury programs falls to employees. These employees specialize in other areas, such as HR, quality control, or security. The letters HR stand for Human Resources.

The number of occupational accidents in Europe and the USA has been declining.

Occupational safety and health in the EU

In a report, the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) informed that rates of ill health and injuries have declined over the past few decades.

However, employees still report persistent and emerging job-related risks to safety and health in the workplace.

In their report – “Management of Occupational Safety and Health” – the authors wrote:

” Poor health and safety, in addition to physical and emotional harm, has cost implications for the individual, the workplace and wider society.”

Nonfatal occupational injury and illness incidence rates by case type, private industry, 2003-2015. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics.

OSH in the USA

In the United States, legislation to protect worker safety and health came into force in 1970. The Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970 required that research, recommendations, and guidance be developed to aid employees and employers.

The 1970 Act also required that employers adopted health and safety standard. Employers had to comply with the new rules, and the government had to police and enforce them.

In the United States, rates of injuries and ill health have also declined over the last few decades. American workers, however, like their European counterparts, still report persistent and emerging job-related risks.

Occupational Health and Safety (OHS)

Table of Contents

What Does Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) Mean?

Occupational health and safety (OHS) is a branch of public health aimed at improving workplace health and safety standards. It studies injury and illness trends in the worker population and offers suggestions for mitigating the risks and hazards they encounter on the job.

Every occupation has health or safety risks associated with it, and it is every employer’s responsibility to ensure that their employees can carry out their work as safely as possible.

Safeopedia Explains Occupational Health and Safety (OHS)

The field of occupational health and safety sets standards to mandate the elimination, mitigation, or substitution of jobsite hazards. OHS programs also include processes and procedures to minimize the consequences of workplace incidents.

Occupational health and safey is a very broad umbrella. It covers not only first aid provisions and the safe operation of heavy machinery, but also infection prevention, ergonomic best practices, and methods for responding to workplace violence.

The Occupational Safety and Health Act

In December of 1970, President Richard Nixon signed the Occupational Safety and Health Act into law, becoming the first far-reaching federal law to protect American workers. Soon after, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) was established to ensure the proper and thorough implementation of the law.

OSHA not only enforces occupational health and safety standards, but continuously updates those standards in light of new research findings, best practices, and

How to Stay Safe on the Job

Some of the topics covered by OHS include the following: