An organization does not only provide benefits such as wages and medical benefits but also social-emotional benefits, respect as well as compassion. The managers should acknowledge employees efforts and reward them accordingly. Active participation of employees in an organization is therefore dependent on the extent to which the organization management value employee’s contribution towards the organization and how it takes care about their well being. With such perceived organizational support, workers feel that they have a duty to help the organization achieve its strategic goals (http://pos.
sych. udel. edu/theory. asp, para 2).Organizational theory presumes that organizational support will help employees meet social-emotional needs, self-esteem.
Organization Support in Health and Safety of Employees Many business organizations seem to strive for as much production and profit maximization as they can achieve without taking into account the employee’s welfare. They ensure that employees work for as long hours as possible with little or no time to relax. This may create stressful working environments. Such human resource managers, do their companies more harm than good.
The performance of a business does not only revolve around customers, suppliers and finances, it also involves the human resource. Human resources are an integral part of any business and business performance depends so much on employee’s performance. Therefore, the health and safety of employees is just as important as any other business aspect and especially when we consider that they are humans. Employees have a right and a responsibility to work in a safe and healthy work place. On the other hand, employers have a legal responsibility to ensure that employees are working in a safe and healthy environment.A healthy and safe working environment means that employee’s health and safety is not affected by business activities they involve themselves in.
Poor health and safety conditions cause sickness, hearing impairments, visual impairments and other health problems which can be very costly for the business. Effective and efficient safety and health practices in an organization helps improve the business’s reputation with own employees, customers as well as the community surrounding it. Addressing issues related to employees’ health and safety in a business environment saves the employer expenditures and adds value to the business.When workers are healthy, the business benefits in numerous ways including reduced insurance costs for workers, less health care expenditures, lower costs for job replacements for the injured workers, increased quality of the business products and services, reduced expenditure on overtime etc.
According to a research on Perceived Organizational Support (POS), most employees will favor supervisors support, fairness of treatment, rewards and job conditions. In return employees will have an increased job satisfaction, reduced stress and good mood which translate into increased commitment and reduced turnover (http://pos. sych. udel. edu/theory. asp, para 4).
Safety and health for the employees will have a great impact on indirect expenditure as a result of increased business production, increased employee morale, low employee turnover and increased quality of human resource in general. It also benefits employees as well as their families in the following ways; employee’s income is protected, the level of stress at workplace is reduced drastically and the employee’s family is not hampered by injuries and sicknesses.As the cost of health care increases, it is becoming increasingly difficult for many employers to provide employees with health care benefits that match the current standards. The increase in cost of the health care is in most cases as a result of preventable causes and life styles which include stress, alcoholism, cigarette smoking, substance abuse, poor diet and lack of physical exercises among others.
To reduce the rates of hospitalizations, organizations should focus on a health care management approach that promotes holistic changes in employee’s health and productivity as well as decreasing preventable lifestyle risks.For instance employers should support employees who are trying to quit smoking and other addictions. It is also known that a number of accidents at workplace are related to alcoholism. Alcoholism also causes loss of working days due to absenteeism. Helping addicted staff to quit will definitely cut on alcohol related sicknesses, reduce cases of disciplinary and most importantly enhance the corporate image. Managers should moderate counseling programs, wellness outreach at workplace and collaboration with other social agencies to help prevention and reduction of alcohol abuse, cigarette smoking and drug abuse.
To encourage healthy practices in a business environment and reduce the health care costs, business organizations should formulates cost effective policies such as no smoking policies, adequate vacation time, paternity and maternity leave etc. Management should provide services such as vending machines that can provide drinks and snacks which can help to boost the health of employees. Facilities such as gym and game equipments should be provided to employees to ensure that they participate in physical activities in order to maintain employees’ fitness. Physical fitness is appropriate for personal and professional growth of workers.Some organizations have used work fitness programs as a recruitment and retention strategy.
Fitness programs can also be used as a strategy to decrease health care costs. When an employee is physically fit he/she is unlikely to fall sick. Fitness will reduce absenteeism and help minimize health care expenditure. Employees who engage in regular exercises will have increased and sustained energy which allows them to stay focused on the task at hand (Doyle, para 3).
When employees participate in team activities like softball, they create a wonderful opportunity to strengthen their relationships as they discover new ways of working together.Stress is another health concern that is very common in a workplace. Although stress is not a disease, it is a major threat to employee’s health and safety at work. When employees are under excessive pressure they are likely to suffer from stress which may result to illness.
Stress can be caused by poor working conditions, poor communication and relationship among employees, poor communication from supervisors, employee’s skills not matching those that are required for a particular job etc. Events that occur away from workplace like bereavement, sickness of family members, financial and social problems may cause stress.Risks and accidents that may affect employee’s health and safety at workplace must be properly controlled. Although it is not the employers wish to have accidents at the place of work, at times they occur, causing injuries as well as loss of the business assets, loss of profits and in some cases loss of the entire business. It is therefore imperative for a business organization to put some measures in place to prevent such incidents from happening, since they always have a cause.
Some of the common accidents that may occur in a workplace place include fire and explosions.Exposure of employees to dangerous and toxic chemicals, radiations and very high levels of noise are some of the risks to employee’s health. Such risk s could be part of a routine work or they may happen as accidents and their effects on human health could be immediate or long term. To prevent such risks and accidents from occurring, the organization’s management should have a comprehensive safety and health management system that addresses prevention of accidents and health hazards in the workplace (HSE, pp 4).A good safety and health system should ensure that management sets health and safety policies that brings all employees on board and assign them responsibilities. The workplace and working environment should be analyzed to identify potential as well as existing health hazards.
The management should draw plans to control potential health and safety hazards and identify methods of preventing these hazards from occurring. Finally, managers, supervisors and employees should be given proper training to deal with hazards in case they occur.This should apply to all businesses regardless of their size (Klarreich, pp 56). Business managers have shifted their attention from providing health care as a social service to operating a business by engaging in modern health care delivery systems such as case management and managed care systems. Effective and individualized health management strategies can help business improve on employee health benefit and cut on unnecessary spending.
Individualized health care package identifies employee’s disease prevalence and saving opportunities.Management should provide incentive programs for employees to encourage them to participate more in saving for their health care costs. It is important for management to seek ideas from employees on their health and safety. Engaging employees in health and safety discussions makes them feel that their opinions are valued and that some measures have been put in place to protect them.
Employees will also get a forum to discuss issues affecting them at workplace or outside working place.This creates a culture that helps build a less stressful working environment which is ultimately healthy for employees. It is also worth to make your customers and the community in which you operate, understand the commitment you have taken to provide a safe and a health working environment (Barten, Fustukian & Haan, pp 14).Conclusion Failure to formulate and implement good health and safety policies at workplace can be very costly to the business. Accidents and sickness can adversely affect employees as well as the business. Accidents may also cause damage to equipments, products and business assets.
Injured and sick employees will have their wages affected. The business may experience loss of productivity due to interruptions and also as a result of replacing injured or sick employees with inexperienced ones. Through safety and health practices a business can have a good reputation which in turn can help attract and retain customers. This gives the business a competitive edge especially when it comes to hiring employees and marketing its products.
Some businesses have built their success on ensuring that safety and health standards are not compromised while others have suffered a great deal as employees and customers have turned against them for poor and low quality safety and health standards. Health employees tend to have a positive attitude, mental balance and always feel good. Workers with good health have self confidence which empowers them to aim for higher levels of achievement at the workplace.
