| SH5104: Occupational Health |
In the current COVID-19 pandemic, your company is constantly receiving different instructions on safe management measures for your workers. Besides the risk of COVID-19 infection, your workers are also at risk of injuries and ill health from their work activities and changes to their working environment. Workers who are working from home are feeling stressed from the lack of resources, interruptions from family members, etc. For workers who need to be in the workplace, they are experiencing stress from an increased workload, fear of catching COVID-19, etc.
You are Head of the Workplace Safety and Health Department in Company
ABC which has about 1000 workers. Your CEO wants you to implement a holistic occupational safety and health management system which is sustainable, which would be ready to handle current and future pandemics/epidemics and any other WSH hazards in the workplace. You recognize that the best approach would be to implement Total Workplace Safety and Health, an initiative which was introduced by the Ministry of Manpower and the Workplace Safety and Health Council. Demonstrate your understanding of Total WSH by answering the following questions:
- Describe Company ABC’s entire corporation/enterprise’s business activities,
organizational structure, operating architecture, and workflow. Indicate where
you would site the Total WSH Committee which you will be forming and who
the committee would be reporting to. - Describe and discuss how you will update the company’s existing Occupational Safety and Health Management system to one which is aligned to Total WSH.
- Describe the composition of the Total WSH Committee and the type of support the committee will require so as to improve staff productivity and company profits, reduce medical expenditure, sickness absence, staff turnover, work injuries, and ill-health. Provide details on the seniority of staff of committee members/workgroups and their business division/unit. Describe the roles of each Total WSH Committee member.
- Describe how workplace safety and health hazards would be identified in an
integrated and holistic way and the competency-building required. For the
hazards identified, how you would prioritize the hazards for implementation of
preventive measures, taking into consideration the impact on productivity,
company profit, sickness absence, work injury, and ill health, and medical cost. - For COVID-19 and another workplace health hazard that you have identified,
describe the information needed for determining the appropriate preventive
measures to be implemented. Describe also how you would evaluate the
effectiveness of the preventive measures and how you would communicate the hazards and preventive measures to the staff and contract workers. - Identify intervention programs to tackle two priority areas, providing the
basis for your choice. For each of these priority areas, provide details on the
program elements. Describe how you would get buy-in from workers and
management, how you would implement and communicate the program, and what success indicators you would monitor. - Describe and discuss how Total WSH is interfaced and integrated with the
company’s business operations and how you will ensure the sustainability of Total WSH in the company.
