Variation in Health & Safety Performances in Industries

It is important to look for how and why health and safety performances vary. Occupational health and safety performances varies significantly between economic sectors within the country. It mostly depends on the nature of job. The most lead in the incidence of occupational deaths worldwide is due to agriculture, forestry, mining and construction. The international Labour Organisation’s (ILO) “Safe Work” programme has estimated, for example, that tropical logging accident caused 300 deaths per 100000 workers. On an average every tenth logger will die of work related accidents. Similarly, certain occupations and sectors, such as meat packing industry and mining have high rates of work related (Occupational diseases), which could even be fatal.

Develop a safe work culture

Generally small workplaces have a worse safety record than large ones. It seems that the rate of fatal and serious injuries in small workplaces (defines as less than 50 employees) is twice that in large workplaces (defined as those with more than 200 employees). This may be of the reason that the employer of firm is not serious about the safety of its workforce thinking that the workforce is small. Moreover the works will be unorganized or casual in most of the cases. To make an incident free surroundings, all the workplaces must develop a safety culture. There should be an industrial health and safety department in every industry even if the work place is small. There should be a safety officer and safety stewards, supervisors supporting him. Every firm must display their safety policy and  safety obligations towards their work force. Ineffective implementation of safe work practices may also leads to variation in health and safety performances among the firms. There are firms which are doing safety inspections and audits for the name sake and for false documentation. This will degrade the safety performances of the firm. The top management of every firm must ensure that, proper implementation of safety practices are prevailing and are carried out in a regular manner. There should be a safety culture in each work site. Developing a safe work culture is not a one day process rather it should be a habit to follow everyday. For a good work site, there must be a system established in each work place for continuous monitoring and implementation of the existing safety norms and there must be scope for further improvement.