Employee Health And Safety Essay Samples

Question 1

The occupational safety and health administration commonly referred to as OSHA is an institution charged with ensuring high safety and health standards are maintained by all organizations that employ US citizens. The agency asserts that it is the duty of the employers to ensure all employees’ safety concerns are addressed while at the workplace and in this line it has developed a number of regulations that the employers should follow. It also ensures that whistleblowers are protected in order to encourage the passing of information about employers who fail to abide by the set regulations. However, the agency has come under scrutiny by members of the public and particularly employers who feel that it has so much power that tramples on their right to run businesses as they wish. Critics argue that some of the regulations by OSHA simply make doing of business hard and therefore its powers should be reduced.
OSHA sets regulations without consulting the owners of businesses and employers. Some of the controversial regulations include that of employers reporting all injuries that happen at the workplace and then keep records of the same. It also demands that all former and current employees be given free access to the log of all illnesses and work related injuries as well as providing access to employee’s exposure records as well as their medical records. This infringes in the privacy policies at many organizations and interferes with operations. On the issues of reporting, OSHA should keep the records instead of demanding organizations to report and keep the record which affects their operational cost budget. The agency should simply keep their operations to assessing the level of safety at institutions and give their recommendations and then leave the rest to the businesses and their insurance partners to run. Random checks by OSHA should involve their staff only and not demand to be accompanied by employees who are on duty.

Question 2

Employee assistance programs (EAP) are part of organizational management functions and part of employee benefit programs that seeks to promote improved work delivery. The programs basically include counseling and psychological help given to employees to help them cope with challenging environment, personal or institutional issues that hinder smooth work delivery. There are two ways in which an employee can enroll for assistance through the program. First, an employee who realizes that they are struggling with an issue may seek help or the management and supervisors may recommend professional assistance for an employee whose personal challenges hinders proper work delivery. In a case where an employee realize that their personal issues or choices such as drug abuse poses a challenge to their delivery at work, psychological help and moral support is important to ensure that the problem is dealt with. Like any other counseling or professional assistance, employees assistance programs should maintain high levels of privacy to encourage people to enroll in them.
In the case where an assistance manager comes out and confess to struggling with the issue of drug and substance abuse prior to his promotion, victimization should be highly avoided. The fact that the employee had passed the test while still struggling with the issue means that it did not affect his performance. Secondly, by coming out to confess that he had the problem shows that he was ready to change. EAP does not necessarily include confiding with the superiors but this employee decided to open up about the challenge because he acknowledged the support from his colleague and superior. Therefore, using this against him would result to poor performance as the employee would not have faith in the entire program. The best way to help a person reform is through offering moral support and in this case is continuing with normal activities which include giving the employee his new position and encouraging him and other members of staff to reform.

Question 3

The decision to regulate employee’s conduct while of the duty requires considerations of several factors. The main purpose of opting to enact such measure is to help improve the employee productivity at workplace. This is because certain illegal behaviors such as drinking or smoking might negatively affect the level of human effort applied in various tasks in the organization, affect the image of the organization in a negative way or result to negative relations at the workplace. In addition, such measures could help in reducing organizational costs related to the employees’ medical insurance which could be alleviated by engaging in such unhealthy practices. However, regulating what the employees does while off duty is a violation of privacy rights of the employee and it could result in a lawsuit on grounds of intrusion into personal life and invasion of the employee’s privacy. However, in an effort to improve job performance of the employees, it is necessary to enact certain rules that regulate certain activities that the employee engage in while off- duty including smoking and drinking, and conduct regular testing on substance abuse since this may have a direct negative impacts to the organization if not regulated. This should however be included in the employment contract as a way of reducing misunderstanding in the event such an incident occurs.
Provision of affordable employees’ health insurance cover as well as enhance enables the company to insure their employees against health related issue while providing higher insurance policy for those employers regulating the off-duty activities of the employees is tempting. However, the opinion still remains that, employers should consider the welfare and performance of their organizations, and health hazard associated with such off the job activities rather than the cost of the insurance.

Question 4

Preventing the occurrence of violence within the organization is one of the essential measures that ensures that safety of employees is safeguarded. Identifying and preventing any potential behavior that could result to violence through such measures as installing surveillance gadgets, employee investigation of employees helps in enhancing employees’ safety. The availability of employee’s testing tool is a strategy that could help the employers in reducing chances of violence cases within the organization. However, using the gadget on the employees does not guarantee absolute results and its use is a violation of the employees’ privacy, unless they willingly accept to take the test. as such buying such a gadget is not the best option of mitigating violence in the organization. Instead, using other methods such as implementation of employee assistance program could help in identifying employees’ behavior, thus taking the necessary assistance program to mitigate the issue.
Terminating an employee who tested positive as having the likelihood to be violent is not a concrete solution to solving work-related violence case. Such an action violates the terms of employment contract and other employment rights in general, since the person has not yet been involved in any violent activity, in addition to the fact that the test could be wrong. Rather if an employee tests positive, organizations should take drastic proactive measures that could change the Behavior of such an employee. This will create a likelihood of the change in behavior, thus increasing safety for the other employees without causing any legal or unethical issue. In addition, since the machine is not entirely accurate, there is a likelihood that an innocent employee might be terminated.