Managing Workplace Health & Safety Flashcards
What is the importance of WHS?
- Healthy and safe work environments both desirable and cost-effective
- WHS pervades all aspects of HRM
- Costs of workplace accidents and disease major factor in strategic focus
What is WHS?
- WHS refers to ‘the protection and maintenance of the highest degree of physical, mental and social wellbeing of worker in all occupations’
What is the strategic approach to WHS?
- Adopt strategic interventions and use these as evidence of their contributions to business productivity and profitability
- Focus on the common causes and trends of site accidents and injuries
- Develop appropriate preventative work systems or more effective administrative and rehabilitation programs
- i.e. proactive approach
What are key WHS issues?
- Accidents
- Stress
- Psychological contract breach
- Abusive Supervision
- Family-Work conflict
- Workplace Bullying
What are the predictors of WHS accidents?
- Risk-seeking, impatience, carelessness
- Optimism bias
- Substance abuse
- Safety climate
- Poor training of safety procedures
How can WHS accidents be mitigated?
- Comprehensive safety polciies
- Training
- Equipment, protective elements, ergonomics
- Supervision
- Ongoing analysis of accidents and injuries, risk management
What is stress?
- No agreed definition
- Eustress (benefits) vs distress (costs)
What are the symptoms and reactions of stress?
- Symptoms: fatigue, exhaustion, physical or emotional breakdown
- Reactions: Reaction or Withdrawl
What is conversation of resources theory?
stressors as resource depleting - loss spiral (harder and harder to recover from resource lost - burnout being the ultimate end)
What is the important theory concerning stress?
Conversation of resources theory
What are the outcomes of psychological contract breach?
- Emotional exhaustion
- Employee turnover, intention or actual
- Age important variable - younger more susceptible to emotional exhaustion when contract breached
How can stress be mitigated?
- Leadership - commitment to stress prevention
- Employee assistance programs
- Felt-fairness
- Reduce work overload and role conflict
- Training managers to diagnose and identify stress
- Supportive supervision
- Increase employee voice:
- Wellness programs
What are the mechanisms for employee voice?
- Climate surveys
- Employee grievances
What are wellness programs?
- Excercise
- Mindfulness
What is abusive supervision?
Subordinates perceptions of the extent to which supervisors engage in the sustained display of hostile verbal and nonverbal behaviours, excluding physical contact
Categorically what are the consequences of abusive supervision?
- Work related
* Non Work
What are the work related consequences of abusive supervision?
- Poor perofrmance
- Reducing helping behaviours
- Aggression at work
- Poor work attitudes (low commitment/satisfaction)
- Stress and somatic symptoms
- Silence
What are the non-work related consequences of abusive supervision?
- Substance abuse
- Insomnia
- Familial issues
What are the elements of family-work conflict?
- Conservation of Resources Theory (Hobfoll, 1989)
- Work to family conflict e.g. obsessive passion
- family to work conflict e.g. problems at home
What are the elements of conservation of resources theory?
- Resources conservation (withdrawal) vs resource investment (proactivity) as responses to stress
- Resource loss spiral: anxiety - physical symptoms - lower performance - promotion prospects lost
- Resource investment: exercise etc
What are the potential spill over effects of family-work conflict?
reduced task, memberhips, and organisation citizenship behaviours
What is workplace bullying?
- A chronic form of stress at work and refers to the repeated systematic exposure of negative acts targeted toward an individual or small group of people who are unable to defend themselves
What is the definition of bullying?
Bullying is ‘the repeated less favrouable treatment of a person by another or others in the workplace, which may be considered unreasonable and inappropriate in the workplace’
What effects can workplace bullying have on organisations?
- Cause significant financial damage to organisations
- Compensation
- Counselling
- Litigation
- Long term abseentism
- Low performance
How can workplace bullying be mitigated?
- Leadership
- Senior managers and leaders need to be strongly committed to creating and enacting policies and practices that protect employee well-being
- Following up with corrective action when necessary
- Promote perceptions of psychological safety
- Encourage open communication
- HR departments need to be committed to mitigating bullying
