IOSH is the Chartered body for health and safety professionals. With more than 39,000 individual members, it is the biggest professional health and safety organisation in the world.
It’s been a while since I took this course, March 2000 to be exact. This was an intense 3 day course with an exam and project at the end. Successfully completing this course has allow me to conduct internal Health & Safety audits, Risk Assessments, and report back to senior management my findings.
Occupational health and safety is a cross-disciplinary area concerned with protecting the safety, health and welfare of people engaged in work or employment. The goal of all occupational health and safety programs is to foster a safe work environment.[1] As a secondary effect, it may also protect co-workers, family members, employers, customers, suppliers, nearby communities, and other members of the public who are impacted by the workplace environment. It may involve interactions among many subject areas, including occupational medicine, occupational (or industrial) hygiene, public health, safety engineering, chemistry, health physics.
Reasons for Occupational health and safety
The event of an incident at work (such as legal fees, fines, compensatory damages, investigation time, lost production, lost goodwill from the workforce, from customers and from the wider community).
- Legal – Occupational requirements may be reinforced in civil law and/or criminal law; it is accepted that without the extra “encouragement” of potential regulatory action or litigation, many organizations would not act upon their implied moral obligations.
Occupational health and safety officers promote health and safety procedures in an organisation. They recognize hazards and measure health and safety risks, set suitable safety controls in place, and give recommendations on avoiding accidents to management and employees in an organisation. This paper looks at the main tasks undertaken by OHS practitioners in Europe, Australia and the USA, and the main knowledge and skills that are required of them. Like it or not, organisations have a duty to provide health and safety training. But it could involve much more than you think. (Damon, Nadia. 2008. Reducing The Risks, Training and Coaching Today, United Kingdom, pg.14)
An effective training program can reduce the number of injuries and deaths, property damage, legal liability, illnesses, workers’ compensation claims, and missed time from work. A safety training program can also help a trainer keep the required OSHA-mandated safety training courses organized and up-to-date.
Safety training classes help establish a safety culture in which employees themselves help promote proper safety procedures while on the job. It is important that new employees be properly trained and embrace the importance of workplace safety as it is easy for seasoned workers to negatively influence the new hires. That negative influence however, can be purged with the establishment of new, hands-on, innovative effective safety training which will ultimately lead to an effective safety culture. A 1998 NIOSH study concluded that the role of training in developing and maintaining effective hazard control activities is a proven and successful method of intervention.[3]