This collection, consistent with our emphasis on the psychological and behavioural aspects of risk in organizations focuses on understanding the causes of accidents, injuries and errors in the workplace and increasing employee occupational health and safety. Why this emphasis? The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimated 2.2 million people die every year from accidents at work or occupational diseases and these numbers may be increasing. In addition, the ILO estimates 270 million non-fatal accidents cause injury worldwide. Workplace accidents and errors have a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars each year. There are also wide country differences (e.g., China has higher rates), and wide occupational differences (e.g., construction and transportation have higher rates) in the incidence of accidents and errors. Organizations incur both direct and indirect costs from workplace accidents and injuries: direct costs include payments to injured workers and costs of their treatment, and costs of health and accident insurance; indirect costs include lost productivity and overtime charges. The healthcare system gets stretched given increased usage and efforts by governments to constrain costs. Furthermore, the injured workers and their families endure considerable financial and emotional suffering. Organizations are now taking a more proactive approach to accidents, health and safety by engaging in risk assessment and risk management. The accumulating evidence shows that investing in occupational health and safety results in improved financial and social responsibility performance - increasing employee health and safety pays. What causes accidents and errors in the workplace? Research findings point to a range of influential factors at an individual, social, organizational and environmental level. At the individual level, personality and cognitive factors have been found to influence the likelihood of accident involvement, as well as attitudes and beliefs about safety (e.g., a macho attitude among oil rig workers). Human factors have a predominant effect on accidents, as individuals may become tired, stressed and distracted from the task in hand (e.g., 25% of driving accidents and 18% of workplace accidents are fatigue-related). Broader social and organizational factors can also influence accidents and people's behaviour at work, such as their willingness to engage in safety activities and training. Research on 'safety culture' has emphasized the importance of having strong management commitment to health and safety. A number of major industrial accidents have been linked to a negative safety culture, where production is emphasized over safety (e.g., the Piper Alpha off-shore oil platform). In addition, technological factors may play a significant role (e.g, computer usage and carpal tunnel syndrome/repetitive strain injury). Organizations also differ in their health and safety performance. Some organizations are viewed as industry leaders (e.g., Dupont), and these have offered their wisdom and practices to other organizations to help them improve their performance in this area. Key elements in these programs include employee selection and training, fostering employee understanding, participation and engagement in health and safety matters, developing a health and safety culture at organizational and group/work unit levels, communicating and reinforcing safe workplace practices, bench-marking one's organization against the industry leaders. The contributors to this volume will come from various countries, reflecting unique interest and knowledge in particular areas (e.g., the UK and Norway regarding offshore installations, the US regarding mining and construction), as well as company representatives describing their best-practices. (Author/publisher)
Samenvatting