Bringing Some Health Into Your Safety Part 1 of 2

Bringing Some Health Into Your Safety Part 1 of 2

When it comes Health and Safety in some organizations, especially private ones, many workers might not be able to even give an in-depth description of what exactly it is that their safety counterparts do, but that doesn’t stop Health and Safety professional from being important.

Unfortunately, the sad reality of safety work is that it’s hard to be 100% effective, regardless of how hard we try. Certain factors are simply out of our grasp, while others take so much time and planning to tackle that we may be too late by the time we implement an effective solution.

Safety professionals are no strangers to these frustrations, and sometimes vent about their experiences, particularly those in which safety was not taken seriously.

Sometimes, I wonder why people tend to neglect “health” in favor of tackling “safety” issues. It’s an odd question on its surface, but only because there’s a lot to dissect.

It is often observed that issues more closely aligned with health are the cause of more workforce deterioration, employee turnover, and missed work hours than actual safety-related accidents. If this is true, why aren’t we more focused on health?

First of all, let us understand that health and safety are separate entities, or at least purport a definition that sets them apart as such.

Let’s go traditional, and say that things like illness, fitness, lifestyle complications, etc. are “health,” while slips, trips, falls, and any external accidents are “safety”.

The most obvious gray area here has to do with chemical and particle exposure on the job, which may lead to health complications in the long term. For the purposes of this write-up, we’ll put these under safety, as they are directly related to preventable workplace exposure.

Currently, the “safety” issues, as outlined by our definition, are huge. They’re explicitly regulated by government agencies, and firms face steep penalties if they don’t comply. It would seem that there are two main reasons why the reach of health and safety is primarily concerned with safety which is perceived more importantly and of concern for personal privacy.

Health: The fact is that gruesome work-related incidents are just gruesome. That alone means that it can be hard to direct focus to preventing common colds and heart disease, which affect workers quietly and off-site as compared to workers getting crushed by machinery or killed in falls from height.

The slippery slope of focusing on traditional “health” issues is that many of them have to do with personal choices. Fitness and exercise, or eating habits which may lead to health complications, are almost exclusively a matter of personal circumstances and choices.

Safety: Safety is still very important, despite how the numbers are argued. If safety professionals weren’t securing workplaces, the results would be catastrophic and the already-sometimes-troubling workplace incident statistics would surprise everyone.

While employers are sometimes legally able to dictate what goes on at work, they don’t have legal control over what goes on at home. Even if that weren’t the case, workers would probably shy away from companies that wanted to reach further into their personal lives, even if the purpose were to keep them safer. To be continued