A large part of working in human resources (HR) is managing employee risk. It is HR’s job to keep employees safe and make sure the company isn’t liable for any employee injuries. Unfortunately, we live in an imperfect world so it is impossible to completely remove all risk, but HR’s goal is to minimize risk as much as possible and act swiftly when accidents do happen.
While managing risk is a lot of preventative work, you also need communication skills to explain accidents to employees/superiors when they arise. When you think of worker safety many people believe that this is only representative of jobs that require manual labor. However, every type of office has to consider their employees’ safety.
All different types of work environments require HR to manage risk and make sure that employees are protected.
The first step in identifying risk management is to identify the hazard. Some common hazards include wet floors, falls from heights, or dangerous equipment. Once your risks are identified, you must evaluate and decide how to prevent the risk from becoming an accident. In order to evaluate which risks are to be prioritized you should rank the risks on a scale of 1-5 based on the likelihood of an accident happening, and severity of the accident.
Making the workplace safer is an essential part of keeping employees happy and productive. If employees feel unsafe, they are less likely to be productive. HR bears this responsibility, and it should not be taken lightly. When HR departments ignore workplace risks, it is very evident and has a direct effect on everyone involved. When HR departments focus on maintaining a safe work environment, they tend to be much more respected by their coworkers and respected by their superiors. Overall, if you follow the formula for solving risk’s, your employees will feel much better coming into work every day.
Risk management: Involves responsibilities to consider physical, human and financial factors to protect organisational and individual interests.
Health: General state of physical, mental and emotional well-being.
Safety: condition in which the physical well-being of people is protected.
Security: Protection of employees and organisational facilities.
Ergonomics: Study and design of the work environment to address the physical demands placed on individuals.
Cumulative Trauma Disorders : Muscle and skeletal injuries that occur when workers repetitively use the same muscle to perform the tasks.
Substance abuse : Use of illicit substance or misuse of controlled substances, alcohol , or other drugs.
Health promotion: Supportive approach of facilitating and encouraging health actions and lifestyle among employees.
Wellness programs: Program designed to maintain or improve employee health before problems arise.
Employee Assistance Program: Program that provides counselling and help to employees having emotional, physical or other personal problems.
Security Audit: Comprehensive review of organisational security.
These are some ways which maintain risk management and worker protection in the organisation. And these are helpful to maintain and managing the risk management and worker protection at the workplace by HR.
Importance of risk management and worker protection
Through the risk management and the workers protection in the companies have delivered an opportunity to prepare for a global event by adjusting their strategies and prepare a contingency plan (Business Continuity Management). Every day they can manage internal risk, which have a greater impact. Similarly, companies operating risk, which is the day to day operations, seems to be more important than financial risk.
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