A Job Is a Dying Concept -Worker Health & Safety Principles-annually 2.3 million workers die across the world.

A Job Is a Dying Concept

Dr. John Howard, Director of NIOSH, gave the keynote presentation last Tuesday (June 19, 2012) at the American Industrial Hygiene Conference (AIHce).  In his talk, he focused on 7 trends that will define the future of occupational health and safety – demography, employment, discrimination, disability, governance, standards and professionalism.  In this blog post, I will focus on one – employment trends.
As Dr. Howard put it, “A job is a dying concept.”
He went on to elaborate – In prior generations, security was what defined employment; today, it is precariousness.  Work is increasingly contingent and less secure.  There is no promise of continuous employment – or, in a great many work situations, of even being considered an “employee.”
According to Dr. Howard, this employment trend has a significant impact on occupational health and safety. Within the current legal structures governing worker protection, non-employee workers are often unrecognized and unprotected.  Both workplace safety regulations and injury compensation schemes are based on one’s status as an employee. Yet, the risk of injury or death in the workplace is not related to a legalistic definition of employment – whether you are an “employee” rather than simply an individual laboring in the workplace.
Later in the week, Mike Wallace, from the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), gave a presentation on the evolution of sustainability reporting and the need for new metrics for evaluating organizational performance related to occupational health and safety.
He started his presentation with the following statistic – annually 2.3 million workers die across the world. It is clear that workplaces are not safe and worker protection is often missing.
He sent on to note that, in the past, safety professionals have “stayed on the sidelines” in defining OH&S metrics for measuring organizational performance – unlike their environmental counterparts. Creating comparable metrics is often viewed as “too complex” and “too time consuming.” I have been spending time reviewing the draft of a new ISO document – Guide 82 – Guide for addressing sustainability in standards.  (For standards geeks, this document was recently circulated as Committee Draft 2 and is intended to be a guidance document for ISO standard writers.)
In reviewing this document, I noted that one of the intents of this document is to list general principles of sustainability.  To accomplish this goal, the document lists principles associated with several topics from environmental labeling and sustainable buildings to risk management and social responsibility.
In reviewing these lists of principles for other areas, I realized that I was not aware of a comparable list of worker health and safety principles.  As I discussed this with other OH&S professionals, they were not aware of any generally-recognized list of worker health and safety principles either.
I thought about it and came up with the following list of seven principles (modeled after the list of Quality Principles set out in ISO 9000).

 Worker Health and Safety Principles

 1.       Health and Safety Focus
Worker health and well-being is an important organizational resource to be protected through the prevention of injury and ill health.
 2.       Leadership Commitment
Top management needs to provide the leadership and resources necessary for effective management of OH&S issues
 3.       Worker Engagement
Workers need to have the information, opportunities and accountability necessary for them to actively participate in ensuring their own safety
 4.       Factual Approach to Decision Making
Decisions and actions related to evaluating and controlling OH&S risks should, to the extent feasible, be based on the analysis of factual information
 5.       Prioritization of Controls
Hazards should be controlled using process, equipment and facility controls before administrative controls and personal protective equipment are utilized
 6.       Prevention Instead of Reaction
Establishing systematic processes to identify and address OH&S risks is more effective than waiting until after an incident has occurred to react
 7.        Supply Chain Accountability
Organizations need to act ethically when transferring OH&S risks to others in their supply chain
 What do you think?  Let me know by posting a comment to this blog post – or sending me an e-mail at