Employee Well - Being

                       THE PRACTICE OF EMPLOYEE 

                                     WELL - BEING

Their personal problems are going to be revealed to others, possibly to the detriment of their future careers. This is the argument for having specialized welfare officers in organizations large enough to be able to afford them. They can be detached in a way that line managers and even personnel managers cannot be.

This part deals with the services provided by the HR department in order to help the organization meet its legal and social responsibilities to ensure a healthy and safe place of work, to help employees cope with their personal problems, to help elderly and retired employees and, in some cases, to make recreational facilities available.

Health and safety

Health and safety policies and programes are concerned with protecting employees – and other people affected by what the company produces and does – against the hazards arising from their employment or their links with the company. Occupational health programes deal with the prevention of ill-health arising from working conditions. They consist of two elements: 

● occupational medicine, which is a specialized branch of preventive medicine concerned with the diagnosis and prevention of health hazards at work and dealing with any ill-health or stress that has occurred in spite of preventive actions; 

● occupational hygiene, which is the province of the chemist and the engineer or ergonomist engaged in the measurement and control of environmental hazards.

Safety programmes deal with the prevention of accidents and with minimizing the resulting loss and damage to persons and property. They relate more to systems of work than the working environment, but both health and safety programmes are concerned with protection against hazards, and their aims and methods are clearly inter-linked. 

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (Bibbings, 2003) has made the following observation on accident prevention:

Health, safety and welfare

We fail to prevent accidents not just because of incomplete control of the circumstances which give rise to them, but because of our partial knowledge of how things really are and, of course, our inevitably incomplete knowledge of what will happen in the future. Human beings in this sense fail to bring order to an essentially chaotic and dangerous world – not just because it defies their efforts to control it but because they do not fully understand its complexity and randomness. The result is a potentially dangerous tendency to deny that error and disorder are permanent features of the natural world and all human undertakings in particular. We become complacent and fail to take preventative action. Good investigation of accidents, where it takes place, tends almost invariably to show that failures to prevent them are rooted either in weaknesses in risk assessment or in the implementation of control measures.

Managing Health and Safety at Work

It is estimated by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) that in the UK about 500 people are killed at work every year and several hundred thousand more are injured or suffer ill-health. It is also estimated that, apart from the pain and misery caused to those directly or indirectly concerned, the total cost to British employers of work related injury and illness exceeds £4 billion a year. The achievement of a healthy and safe place of work and the elimination to the maximum extent possible of hazards to health and safety are the responsibility of everyone employed in an organization, as well as those working there under contract. But the onus is on management to achieve and indeed go beyond the high standard in health and safety matters required by the legislation – the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act in 1974 and the various regulations laid down in the Codes of Practice. The importance of healthy and safe policies and practices is, sadly, often underestimated by those concerned with managing businesses and by individual managers within those businesses. But it cannot be emphasized too strongly that the prevention of accidents and elimination of health and safety hazards are a prime responsibility of management and managers in order to minimize suffering and loss. 

THE IMPORTANCE OF HEALTH AND SAFETY IN THE WORKPLACE

The achievement of the highest standards of health and safety in the workplace is important because the elimination, or at least minimization, of health and safety hazards and risks is the moral as well as the legal responsibility of employers – this is 830 ❚ Health, safety and welfare the over-riding reason. Close and continuous attention to health and safety is important because ill-health and injuries inflicted by the system of work or working conditions cause suffering and loss to individuals and their dependants. In addition, accidents and absences through ill-health or injuries result in losses and damage for the organization. This ‘business’ reason is very much less significant than the ‘human’ reasons given above but it is still a consideration, albeit a tangential one. As described in this chapter, managing health and safety at work is a matter of: 

● developing health and safety policies; 

● conducting risk assessments which identify hazards and assess the risks attached to them; 

● carrying out health and safety audits and inspections; ● implementing occupational health                       programmes; 

● managing stress; 

● preventing accidents; 

● measuring health and safety performance; 

● communicating the need for good health and safety practices; 

● training in good health and safety practices; 

● organizing health and safety.

BENEFITS OF WORKPLACE HEALTH AND SAFETY

 Research by the Health and Safety Executive (2004a) in 19 case-study organizations such as AstraZeneca, Severn Trent Water and Transco, established that the tangible benefits from better health and safety management include higher productivity, lower absence, avoiding the cost of accidents and litigation, meeting client demands, and improved staff morale and employee relations. These organizations have managed to overcome the common perception that health and safety is a compliance or staff welfare issue, and use initiatives in this area to add value to the business. Employers in the study made a number of headline savings from investing in occupational health and safety: 

● Rolls Royce saved £11 million through improved absence management; 

● in one month, St Bartholomew’s Hospital and the London NHS Trust recouped the cost of flu injections for staff; 

● manual-handling injuries were eliminated and the resultant lost hours reduced to zero at furniture retailer MFI

HEALTH AND SAFETY POLICIES 

Written health and safety policies are required to demonstrate that top management is concerned about the protection of the organization’s employees from hazards at work and to indicate how this protection will be provided. They are, therefore, first, a declaration of intent, second, a definition of the means by which that intent will be realized, and third, a statement of the guidelines that should be followed by everyone concerned – which means all employees – in implementing the policy. The policy statement should consist of three parts: 

● the general policy statement; 

● the description of the organization for health and safety; 

● details of arrangements for implementing the policy. The general policy statement The general policy statement should be a declaration of the intention of the employer to safeguard the health and safety of employees. It should emphasize four fundamental points: 

● that the safety of employees and the public is of paramount importance; 

● that safety takes precedence over expediency; 

● that every effort will be made to involve all managers, team leaders and employees in the development and implementation of health and safety procedures;

 ● that health and safety legislation will be complied with in the spirit as well as the letter of the law.

HEALTH AND SAFETY AUDITS 

Risk assessments identify specific hazards and quantify the risks attached to them. Health and safety audits provide for a much more comprehensive review of all aspects of health and safety policies, and procedures and practices programmes. As defined by Saunders (1992): A safety audit will examine the whole organisation in order to test whether it is meeting its safety aims and objectives. It will examine hierarchies, safety planning processes, decision-making, delegation, policy-making and implementation as well as all areas of safety programme planning. 

SAFETY INSPECTIONS

Safety inspections are designed to examine a specific area of the organization – operational department or manufacturing process – in order to locate and define any faults in the system, equipment, plant or machines, or any operational errors that might be the source of accidents. Safety inspections should be carried out on a regular and systematic basis by line managers and supervisors with the advice and help of health and safety advisers. The steps to be taken in carrying out safety inspections are as follows: 

● Allocate the responsibility for conducting the inspection. 

● Define the points to be covered in the form of a checklist.

● Divide the department or plant into areas and list the points to which attention needs to be given in each area.

● Define the frequency with which inspections should be carried out – daily in critical areas. 

● Use the check lists as the basis for the inspection. 

● Carry out sample or spot checks on a random basis. 

Carry out special investigations as necessary to deal with special problems such as operating machinery without guards to increase throughput. 

● Set up a reporting system (a form should be used for recording the results of inspections). 

● Set up a system for monitoring that safety inspections are being conducted properly and on schedule and that corrective action has been taken where necessary.

 WELFARE SERVICES

 There are arguments against the provision of welfare services. They imply dogooding and the HR fraternity has spent many years trying to shake off its association with what it, and others, like to think of as at best peripheral and at worst redundant welfare activities. Welfare is provided by the state services – why should industrial, commercial or public sector organizations duplicate what is already there? The private affairs of employees and their out-of-work interests should not be the concern of their employers. It is selfish to maintain large playing fields and sports pavilions if they are going to be used by a minute proportion of staff for a very limited period of time – the space and facilities could be better used by the community. The argument that the provision of employee welfare services increases the loyalty and motivation of employees has long been exploded. If such services are used at all, they are taken for granted. Gratitude, even if it exists, is not a motivating factor.

Welfare services fall into two categories:

 ● individual or personal services in connection with sickness, bereavement, domestic problems, employment problems, and elderly and retired employees;

 ● group services, which consist of sports and social activities, clubs for retired staff and benevolent organizations.

Principles for providing group services

 Group services, such as sports or social clubs, should not be laid on because they are ‘good for morale’. There is no evidence that they are. They are costly and should be provided only if there is a real need and demand for them, arising from a very strong community spirit in a company or lack of local facilities. In the latter case, the facilities should be shared in an agreed and controlled way with the local community.

GROUP WELFARE SERVICES

 Group employee services mainly consist of restaurants, sports and social clubs, and nursery facilities, although some companies still support various benevolent societies which provide additional help and finance in times of need. Company restaurant facilities are obviously desirable in any reasonably sized establishment where there is relatively little choice of facilities in the vicinity. Alternatively, luncheon vouchers can be provided. A massive investment in sports facilities is usually of doubtful value unless there is nothing else in the neighborhood and, in accordance with the principles mentioned earlier, the company is prepared to share its facilities with the local community. In a large company in a large town, it is very difficult to develop feelings of loyalty towards the company teams or to encourage people to use the sports club. Why should they support an obscure side when their loyalties have always been directed to the local club? Why should they travel miles when they have perfectly adequate facilities near at hand? Such clubs are usually supported by small cliques who have little or no influence over the feelings of other employees, who leave the enthusiasts to get on with whatever they are doing.

PROVISION OF EMPLOYEE WELFARE SERVICES

It seems obvious that the HR department should provide employee welfare services. Inevitably, HR staff will be dealing with cases and providing advice because they are in constant contact with employees and may be seen to be disinterested. It is to be hoped that they will also have some expertise in counselling.

Increasingly, however, it is being recognized that employee welfare is the responsibility of line management and supervision. If the latter take on their proper role as team leaders rather than their traditional autocratic and directive role, they should be close enough to each member of their team to be aware of any personal problems affecting their work. They should be trained in identifying symptoms and at least be able to refer people for counselling if it is clear that they need more help than the team leader can provide. Employee welfare services can be provided for either internally by means of a counselling service or externally through an agency which runs employee assistance programmes (EAPs).

INTERNAL COUNSELLING SERVICES

 Internal counselling services can be provided by full-time staff or volunteers who may work on a part-time basis. No specific academic qualifications are required for this work, but those carrying it out should be carefully assessed for suitable and relevant experience and they should have undergone extended training in counselling methods.

EMPLOYEE ASSISTANCE PROGRAMMES

 Employee assistance programmes (EAPs) originated in the US in the 1960s. The idea was slow to catch on in the UK, but it is now becoming more accepted. There are a number of external agencies which provide EAP services. They offer, on a contractual basis, a 24-hour phone service giving employees and their families access to counselling on a range of problems including stress, alcohol and drug abuse, marital breakdown and financial and legal problems. Most services identify the problem and arrange for a relevant specialist to phone back, although face-to-face counselling may also be offered, either at local offices or at surgeries on company premises. In addition, employers may refer employees direct to the service. Where long-term treatment relating to alcohol and drug problems or psychological problems is needed, employees are referred to state services

CONCLUTION

.Welfare services may be provided for matters concerning employees which are not immediately connected with their jobs although they may be connected generally with their place of work. These matters will include individual services relating to employees’ welfare such as private help with counselling on personal problems, assistance with problems of health or sickness and special services for retired employees. Group services may include the provision of social and sporting activities and restaurants. Child-care facilities may be provided for individual employees but on a collective basis.

REFERENCES

https://www.google.com/search?q=armstrong+handbook+of+human+resource+management&rlz=1C1BNSD_enLK997LK997&oq=Arm&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j46i20i175i19

Health and Safety Executive (2008) Annual Report, HSE, London

 

Holt, A and Andrews, H (1993) Principles of Health and Safety at Work, IOSH Publishing, London

Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (2008) Annual Report, RoSPA, London

 

Saunders, R (1992) The Safety Audit, Pitman, London