Health and safety rules as well as work procedures form part of the program elements that help to achieve
the goals of having a safe and healthy workplace.
So we're going to look at some of those health and safety rules and how to go about ensuring that you
appropriately set health and safety rules within your organization and also establish correct work procedures.
Government health and safety regulations obviously would represent minimum requirements for setting
health and safety rules within your organization in almost all cases.
Organizations will have to augment these regulations with specific rules.
Again, this brings to bear the idea of risk assessment, of course, based on an assessment of risks
within your own organization.
You would definitely come up with rules that will help you maintain a safe and healthy work environment.
These rules must be followed to achieve a healthy and safe workplace.
Rules will differ from organization to organization, but there are some general guidelines that typically
will be helpful.
So some guidelines to consider would be that rules should be specific to health and safety concerns
in the workplace.
Of course, this also speaks to risk assessment.
It must be specific to the concerns.
You can just bring rules from another organization or another facility and dump on your own people.
The Joint Occupational Health and Safety Committee should participate in the formulation of rules that
is speaking to employee participation.
It's important that the input of employees and management come together to form rules so that the rules
are acceptable and everyone has a sense of ownership.
Of course, that would help to ensure that everyone adheres to those rules.
Rules should be stated in clearly understandable terms.
It's also important that rules are best stated in positive terms.
That is, rather than saying employees shall not, it's better to say employees shall.
So it is more positive reinforcement.
The reasons for the rule should also be explained to employees.
Remember, we're talking about guidelines, general guidelines for setting rules.
And remember also that rules have to be based on the need of the environment, based on specific needs
and peculiarities of the work or the environment or the organization in question.
Okay.
So the reasons for the rules should be explained.
Rules must be enforceable.
Now, you don't want to have rules that cannot be obeyed or that cannot be enforced in a scenario where
it is probably not possible to be able to monitor a certain kind of behavior.
You don't want to put a rule like that.
And so whether employees obeyed or not, it is not possible for management to check.
And if it's not possible for management to check or for supervisors to be able to enforce such a rule,
then it becomes redundant.
And what happens is that there is a sense that rules that employees begin to get, that rules don't
have to be obeyed.
So it's important that the rules are enforceable, since disregard for one rule will lead to disregard
for others like have explained, rules should be available to all employees in written form.
And we have talked about communication around on very important and it should be in the language of
communication of employees.
So if employees in a certain worksite are more familiar with a particular language, probably not the
lingua franca of the country.
Maybe it's a local language.
It's important that the rules are also communicated in the language that the employees actually understand
and they can relate with.
Lose, of course, should be periodically reviewed as it is with all of the elements of the program
like we have talked about.
Plan, do check out cycle.
So it should be reviewed to evaluate the effectiveness and to make changes for improved effectiveness.
It's also important that there's compliance with health and safety rules to ensure that everyone is
compliant.
What I mean by that is that just like we mentioned as part of the eight principles, we said that.
Working safely must be a condition of employment.
So compliance with health and safety rules must be considered a condition of employment.
Rules also must be explained to new employees when they start work or if they are transferred, or if
they are placed in a new environment that is probably in a new role or with new equipment or what have
you.
Also, the employer should have procedures for dealing with the persons that flout rules, and particularly
for those that also are repeat rule violators.
To be able to enforce rules and regulations within the Organisation for Safety to work, there has to
be responsibility for ensuring this happens.
And typically supervisors in this case line supervisors are responsible for correcting unsafe acts such
as breach of rules, and they must be supported in this duty by management.
A number of points to be considered in establishing procedures on how supervisors actually correct or
enforce rules include ensuring that employees are aware of the rules we've talked about that ensure
that employees are not encouraged, coerced or forced to disregard the rule by fellow employees.
All rules are to be observed.
No violation will be disregarded.
The role of discipline is that of education, not punishment.
That is, even though there would be a need to
create some sort of disciplinary measure for those that flout rules or violate rules.
The role of such discipline must always be education, not punitive.
Action must be taken promptly while having guidelines for penalties for the first offender or infractions
may be desirable.
It's also important that there is some flexibility that is required in applying the guidelines, since
of course each case will vary.
So there has to be some emotional intelligence also placed or put in place or applied by supervisors
when enforcing rules and when mentioned.
Now, disciplinary action.
Action also in terms of disciplinary action should be taken in private and recorded closely related
to rules and regulations in the workplace.
Is what procedures?
Now, what CDOs are the safest ways of doing a job, job instruction, monitoring, performance and
accident investigation?
Essentially, we're saying that the best way to go about a particular job is what is considered as the
correct work procedure.
And in order to determine now that is taking safety into consideration, that means the safest way to
go about doing the job.
Now, in order to be able to come to what the safest way to do a job is, we require we have to carry
out a job safety analysis.
GFC in some instances we call it a job hazard analysis.
It is the first step in developing the correct work for CDO.
In the job safety analysis, each task of a specific job is examined to identify hazards and to determine
the safest way to do the job.
The job safety analysis includes selecting the job, breaking down the job into a sequence of steps,
identifying the hazards, and then defining preventive measures.
The analysis should be conducted on all critical tasks or jobs as a first priority.
Essentially, what this is all about is that for starting from critical task for jobs, there should
be job safety analysis on all work that needs to be carried out in a particular organisation or facility.
And based on job safety analysis, correct work procedures must be developed, and those correct work
procedures then form the basis of how the work will be carried out every time that work.
That job is to be carried out within the organisation.
So it behoves on workers to follow correct work procedures for doing any work that has been assigned
to them.
And that correct work proceeds will form part of the programme elements to ensure that an organisation
operates safely.