Occupational health, safety and workers’ wellbeing

Abstract

Occupational health and safety (OHS) is often regarded as something that must be 'implemented' within organisations. The production of documents, including safety policies, procedures and plans, is often misconstrued as 'doing safety' in organisational life. It is believed that, by following the principles and practices embodied in established OHS management systems, workplace hazards will be controlled to within acceptable levels of risk. Indeed, there are many companies, even in the high risk construction industry context, that perform very well in OHS. However, the attainment of OHS is the result of more than implementing an OHS management system. OHS is the outcom,e of organising work properly and holding persons with OHS responsibility accountable for their actions. It is very common that organisations in which third party accredited OHS management systems have been implemented continue to demonstrate considerable 'patchiness' in OHS performance, reflecting project-by-project variation in the degree of local effort that is made to deliver OHS outcomes.