By Yervand Kondrahjian | Staff Writer
We always discuss about the health and wellness of children and school and university students. But what about the students as they enter the workforce? We seldom talk about the physical and mental stability in the workplace, especially in developing countries like Lebanon. We see a lot of workers suffering from various physical and mental pain, because of their work, causes varying from internal to external ones. This is why an organization was created to ensure the safety and security of these workers. But what is this organization?
This organization, the “Occupational Health and Safety Management System”, is responsible for the occupational health and safety (OH&S) of workers and others who can be affected by its activities, including promotion and protection of their physical and mental health. The purpose of an OH&S management system is to provide a framework for managing OH&S risks and opportunities, safe and healthy workplaces by taking effective preventive and protective measures.
The maintenance of an OH&S management system, its effectiveness, and ability to achieve its outcomes are dependent on many factors, which include communication, participation of workers, allocation of resources, and the OH&S objectives. Having a general overview on this system, what is its main principles, and how does it achieve them?
When planning for the OH&S management system, the organization should consider the context of the organization and determine the risks and opportunities that need to be addressed to give assurance that the OH&S management system can achieve its intended outcomes, prevent undesired effects, and achieve continual improvement. Moreover, the organization should determine the necessary competence of workers that can affect its OH&S performance, ensure that workers are competent by the ability to identify hazards on the basis of appropriate education, training, or experience, and where applicable, retain appropriate documented information as evidence of competence.
The organization should plan, control, and maintain the processes needed to meet requirements of the OH&S management system, and to implement the actions by establishing criteria for the processes and adapting work to workers.
Environmental management system (EMS) also comes into play when it comes to the workplace-wellbeing. The EMS helps organizations to boost their environmental performance through more efficient use of resources and reduction of waste, gaining a competitive advantage and also the trust of stakeholders. The purpose of the EMS is to protect the environment, enhance the environmental performance, and incorporate environmental issues into business management.
In the case of the EMS, its maintenance, effectiveness, and ability to achieve its outcomes are dependent on many factors including business practices, strategic directions, and environmental governance.
When planning for the EMS, the organization shall determine external (customer, regulation, community issues…) and internal (hazardous materials, pollution control, company culture…) issues that are relevant to its purpose and that affect the achieving of the intended outcomes. The organization should also maintain the processes needed to meet EMS requirements, control planned changes, and review the consequences of unintended changes, taking action to mitigate any adverse effects, and ensure that outsourced processes are controlled.
Of course, when we talk about the wellbeing of the workplace, the workers are not the only variable in the equation. We also have the overall effect of the environment in and out of the workplace. This is why the EMS and the OHS management system work hand in hand in this case. With these two initiatives, workers can maintain a healthy environment within their workplace, which can have many positive outcomes, not just for the employees, but for the organization as a whole (naturally, happier, and healthier workers will boost the productivity of the work). This is why the OHS management system and EMS are vital in the work life.