On 10 March 2005, the Minister for Manpower Dr Ng Eng Hen, announced in Parliament the adoption of a new WSH framework to improve WSH standards and safety outcomes for Singapore. He also set a target to halve the number of work-related fatalities to 2.5 per 100,000 workers by 2015.
In April 2009, Minister for Manpower, Mr Gan Kim Yong, launched “WSH 2018: a National Strategy for Workplace Safety and Health for Singapore” during the National WSH Campaign. Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong challenged MOM and the WSH Council to bring down the national workplace fatality rate to less than 1.8 fatalities per 100,000 workers by 2018.
WSH 2018 framework will help industries in Singapore to work towards this target. There are many areas that the industries need to improve upon and it is not likely to have a single solution to achieve this. I hope this topic of “Organisational Factors for a Safer Workplace” gives a fresh perspective of improvement of safety performance.
Have you seen a scenario like this?
When incident occurs, most of the time, the employee becomes the one to be blamed due to his carelessness. The management will say “we have provided PPE to the employees, and trainings were provided, but they just did not follow”.
It is true that personal factors contribute to the incident but the problem is that the management forgets the importance of organisational factors.
Then, how can we manage the safety by considering the organisational factors?
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Buildup of safety culture in the organisation;
Good leadership by the top management;
Encourage employee’s involvement and participation on OHS matters, e.g. why they refuse to wear PPE or take shortcuts in work;
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Open communication with employees on OHS matters, e.g. causes of incidents, corrective and preventive actions, etc;
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Assign OHS responsibilities and develop accountabilities among employees; and
- Frequent training and evaluation of training effectiveness
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By Alan Jiao Lei
Consultant (PSB Academy)
Reference:
Bill Taylor, Effective Environmental, Health, and Safety Management Using the Team Approach, Wiley-Interscience, 2005
James E. Roughton, James J. Mercurio, Developing an Effective Safety Culture – A Leadership Approach, Butterworth Heinemann, 2002
WSHAC, WSH2015 a Strategy for Workplace Safety and Health in Singapore |
