KUALA LUMPUR: The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has urged organisations and employers to pay more emphasis in creating a safe and healthy workplace in efforts to prevent any untoward accidents.
Its chairman, Tan Sri Lee Lam Thye said for a workplace safety culture to be developed, there must be a “buy-in”, by all levels of an organisation to embrace safety as well as for employers to accept occupational safety and health (OSH) as an investment and not a cost.
He noted that the integration of safety into continuous process improvement, safety training and education, as well as developing a system for hazard identification and control were important elements of a safety culture at all workplaces.
He said the workplace safety culture was very much related to attitudes, behaviours, beliefs and values of the employers and employees at the workplace.
“A strong safety and healthy culture is the result of positive workplace attitudes from the chief executive officer to the newest hire and the lowest ranking employee, coupled with meaningful and measureable safety and health improvement goals directed towards accident prevention or zero-accident.
“The basic elements of an OSH culture are that all employees within an organisation have the fundamental right to a safe and healthy workplace, accept full responsibility for ensuring his or her own safety and health and that they also have a duty to protect the safety and health of others.”
He said this while speaking at the 29th Annual Conference of Asia Pacific Occupational Safety and Health Organisation (APOSHO) in Bangkok, today.
Lee also said the ability to communicate effectively in an organisation amongst employees and between employees and employers was an important determinant in creating a safety culture.
Trusting employees and encouraging them to solve problems would increase their sense of responsibility and enhance their motivation to take ownership of all OSH issues at the workplace, he said.
“For OSH to create an impact on the individual, which is most essential for a safety culture, we need to empower each individual to make the right decisions in the face of safety threats based on his or her knowledge on OSH.”
He added that leadership in an organisation is the single most critical factor in determining an OSH culture, where employers give emphasis to employee well-being and productivity rather than just the bottom-line targets in the organisation and accepting the OSH Culture as part of the overall corporate culture.
