Development of a Preliminary Model for Evaluating Occupational Health and Safety Risk Management Maturity in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

Exposure to chronic harm is difficult to manage and prevent in industry. There is a need to better understand the state of mind when workers disregard safety processes and expose themselves to this type of risk. This paper develops a theoretical model of the reason why workers voluntarily expose themselves to occupational health and safety (OHS) hazards. This Risk, Agency, and Safety & Health (RASH) model proposes that people willingly expose themselves to chronic injuries via a series of risk-taking processes. This causal chain starts with personal motivation and over-alignment with organisational purpose (including impression management). Ideally, that motivation would be moderated by an ability to predict future harm consequences from the task at hand, but that mechanism is weak because it is difficult to predict cause and effect, the consequences are too far in the future, and the opportunities for vicarious learning are few. The motivation then causes misdirected creativity, hence the development of personally novel ways of solving the problem, albeit with greater risk of harm. Perverse agency then sustains actions that exposure the person to harm. Original contributions are the provision of a detailed explanation for risk-taking, and the integration of multiple well-established psychological constructs.

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why Do Workers Take Safety Risks?—A Conceptual Model for the Motivation Underpinning Perverse Agency

Pons

Pearse

2018

“…Management of OHS risks is a crucial component in the legislative landscape of most countries and in any business [35,36]. Existing methodologies for reducing harm are primarily based on the risk methodology [37], namely the reduction of consequence or the likelihood of harm.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Study Regarding the Improvement of Bottling Process for Spring Waters, through the Implementation of the Occupational Health and Food Safety Requirements

Glevitzky¹,

Sârb²,

Popa³

2019

The design, development and deployment, alongside with preventive maintenance of equipment helps with controlling safety issues in water bottling processes. However, these aspects are not-enough to prevent accidents; they must be closely related to the implementation of quality, occupational health and safety, and food security standards. The approach presented in this paper was to show a summary of the assessment of the risks of injury and professional illness for all within the organization according to the ISO 45001:2018 standard. Also, a statistical analysis was performed to evaluate the occurrence of defects in different equipment in the technological process. The paper highlights the safety parameters of the spring water “Roua Apusenilor” namely the: organoleptic, physic-chemical and microbiological ones, according to the European legislation. A hazard analysis and critical control points (HACCP) generic model was developed for this process. In this case study, the analysis and assessment of hazards that may occur during processing was implemented for still water bottling stages, as was an identification of the critical control points, which include filtration and ozone water treatment. The HACCP principles, included in the ISO 22000:2018 standard, were applied in order to improve the food safety and security, to reduce the risks resulting from the consumption of “Roua Apusenilor” spring water and, also, for increasing customer confidence. The obtained results significantly relied upon the situation found in the industrial company used as a benchmark for the research. The analysis revealed that, considered safety standards OHSAS (ISO 45001) and HACCP (ISO 22000) share the same goal of safety production for safe food products.

“…In addition, safety analysts may find this study useful, as safety professionals have long aimed at adding prediction to safety. The management of occupational safety risks is a significant component of any business [41]. Analysis of the incidents helps occupational risk managers identify which hazards have contributed and led to the most frequent occupational accidents, and thus determine appropriate preventative actions [42].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Analyzing Large Workers’ Compensation Claims Using Generalized Linear Models and Monte Carlo Simulation

Kakhki

Freeman

Mosher

2018

Insurance practitioners rely on statistical models to predict future claims in order to provide financial protection. Proper predictive statistical modeling is more challenging when analyzing claims with lower frequency, but high costs. The paper investigated the use of predictive generalized linear models (GLMs) to address this challenge. Workers’ compensation claims with costs equal to or more than US$100,000 were analyzed in agribusiness industries in the Midwest of the USA from 2008 to 2016. Predictive GLMs were built with gamma, Weibull, and lognormal distributions using the lasso penalization method. Monte Carlo simulation models were developed to check the performance of predictive models in cost estimation. The results show that the GLM with gamma distribution has the highest predictivity power (R2 = 0.79). Injury characteristics and worker’s occupation were predictive of large claims’ occurrence and costs. The conclusions of this study are useful in modifying and estimating insurance pricing within high-risk agribusiness industries. The approach of this study can be used as a framework to forecast workers’ compensation claims amounts with rare, high-cost events in other industries. This work is useful for insurance practitioners concerned with statistical and predictive modeling in financial risk analysis.