Occupational safety and health (OSH) is a cross-disciplinary area concerned with protecting the safety, health and welfare of people engaged in work or employment.
The goals of occupational safety and health programs include to foster a safe and healthy work environment.
OSH may also protect co-workers, family members, employers, customers, and many others who might be affect by the workplace environment.
Occupational safety and health can be important for moral, legal, and financial reasons.
All organisations have a duty of care to ensure that employees and any other person who may be affected by the companies undertaking remain safe at all times.
Moral obligations would involve the protection of employee’s lives and health.
Legal reasons for OSH practices relate to the preventative, punitive and compensatory effects of laws that protect worker’s safety and health.
OSH can also reduce employee injury and illness related costs, including medical care, sick leave and disability benefit costs.
OSH may involve interactions among many subject areas, including occupational medicine, occupational hygiene, public health, safety engineering, industrial engineering, chemistry, health physics, ergonomics and occupational health psychology.
European Union
In the European Union, member states have enforcing authorities to ensure that the basic legal requirements relating to occupational health and safety are met.
In many EU countries, there is strong cooperation between employer and worker organisations (e.g. unions) to ensure good OSH performance as it is recognized this has benefits for both the worker (through maintenance of health) and the enterprise (through improved productivity and quality).
In 1996, the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work was founded.
Member states of the European Union have all transposed into their national legislation a series of directives that establish minimum standards on occupational health and safety. These directives (of which there are about 20 on a variety of topics) follow a similar structure requiring the employer to assess the workplace risks and put in place preventive measures based on a hierarchy of control.
This hierarchy starts with elimination of the hazard and ends with personal protective equipment.
However, certain EU member states admit to having lacking quality control in occupational safety services, to situations in which risk analysis takes place without any on-site workplace visits and to insufficient implementation of certain EU OSH directives. Based on this, it is hardly surprising that the total societal costs of work-related health problems and accidents vary from 2.6% to 3.8% of GNP between the EU member states.
Differences across countries and regions
Because different countries take different approaches to ensuring occupational safety and health, areas of OSH need and focus also vary between countries and regions.
Industry comments include –
There is a need to put a greater emphasis on work-related illness.
In some jurisdictions national regulation focuses on the responsibility of the OHS professional is to keep company directors and managers aware of the issues that they face in regards to Occupational Health and Safety principles and legislation.
In contrast in other jurisdictions lack of information is a significant issue quote “Nearly half of senior managers and company directors do not have an up-to-date understanding of their health and safety-related duties and responsibilities.”
European Standards
A ‘harmonised standard’ is a standard adopted by one of the European standardisation organisations – European Committee for Standardization (CEN).
The so-called ‘New Approach’ represents an innovative way of technical harmonisation by splitting the responsibilities between the European legislator and the European standards bodies.
The ‘New Approach’ is based on the following fundamental principles:
• European directives define the ‘essential requirements’ to ensure a high level of protection of health, safety, consumer protection, or the protection of the environment.
• The task of drawing up the corresponding harmonised standards meeting the essential requirements of products established by the directives is entrusted to the European standardisation organisations (CEN, CENELEC and ETSI).
• Products that comply with harmonised standards are presumed to meet the corresponding essential requirements (presumption of conformity, CE marking) and Member States must accept the free movement of such products.
• The use of these standards remains voluntary. Alternative standards are possible but manufacturers then have an obligation to prove that their products meet the essential requirements
• European directives set out the minimum standards for safety and health in the workplace. The EU directives are implemented through the national legislation of Member States.
• Member States may adopt stricter rules to protect workers but their legislation must comply with the minimum standards. As a result, national safety and health legislation varies across Europe.
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