TAN SRI LEE LAM THYE
NIOSH Chairman
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TheStar Online
Published:
Saturday June 6, 2015 MYT 12:00:00 AM
Updated: Saturday June 6, 2015 MYT 8:02:47 AM
I
AM in Seoul, Korea attending the 30th Asia Pacific Occupational Safety and
Health Organisation Annual Conference.
The theme of the conference is “Harmony for Occupational
Safety and Health (OSH)” and provides an ideal opportunity for OSH
practitioners and experts from around the world to share their experiences and
expertise on how to make the workplace safer and accident-free.
OSH or safety at the workplace must never be taken for
granted.
Time and again it has been proven that failure to
harmonise occupational safety and health and adopt good OSH practices will be
detrimental to the employers and employees at the workplace.
In every workplace, workers and employers must have the
commitment to feel safe and healthy. Developing a strong safety and health
culture at the workplace has the greatest impact on accident reduction.
A culture is an environment that has a philosophy that
permeates the daily activities of the organisation.
Safety and health do not exist in a vacuum. Other aspects
of the organisation, including people and financial management, impact safety.
Therefore, a safety culture must be a part of the overall corporate culture to
be understood and accepted as a high priority.
For this to be developed and successful, it needs to be
internalised and led from the top – i.e. safety needs to be embraced and
practised by key decision makers within the organisation.
By developing a culture of trust and encouraging open and
informed conversations about safety, leaders can create an environment where
workers have a positive attitude toward safety and be empowered to challenge
unsafe behaviour in others.
The commonly recognised elements required to create and
nurture a safety culture are:
> Acceptance of safety as an investment, not a cost;
> Integration of safety into continuous process
improvement;
> Education and training for all in respect of safety;
and
> System for hazard prevention and control.
Culture is a combination of factors related to attitudes,
behaviours, beliefs, values, way of doing things and other shared
characteristics of a particular group of people.
According to the Occupational Safety and Health Master
Plan for Malaysia 2015 (OSH-MP15), it is expected that by the end of 2015, the
Malaysian workforce should be ready to enter the stage of preventive culture.
It is for this reason that fostering a OSH culture at the
workplace is important.
Safety training for employees is the key to achieving a
successful safety programme and management must be committed to invest in
safety. The focal point of OSH training is the human being who needs protection
in all aspects of his life.
To achieve the total promotion of safety and health at
work and elsewhere organisational measures for accident prevention, motivation
and behavioural change must be adopted.
It is therefore, their responsibility to ensure that
safety is a culture at their organisation, not just a priority.
A total safety culture is the ultimate vision of a
safety-improvement mission. In such a culture everyone feels responsible for
safety and pursues it on a daily basis.
At work, employees go beyond “the call of duty” to
identify environmental hazards and at-risk behaviours and intervene to correct
them. In a total safety culture, safety is not a priority that gets shifted
according to situational demands. Rather, safety is a value linked to all
situational priorities.
In line with its objective to enhance and promote the good
practices of Occupational Safety and Health at the workplace, NIOSH will host
the 18th Conference of Occupational Safety and Health to be held from Oct 4-7at
the Putrajaya International Convention Centre (PICC).
The theme for the 18th COSH is “Fostering An OSH Culture
at the Workplace” emphasising on the need for greater joint efforts by the
Government, employers and employees to reduce workplace accidents and work
towards the goal of zero-accident at the work-place.
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