What is occupational health and safety?

Occupational health and safety is a discipline with a broad scope involving many specialized fields. In its broadest sense, it should aim at:

the promotion and maintenance of the highest degree of physical, mental and social wellbeing of workers in all occupations; the prevention among workers of adverse effects on health caused by their working conditions; the protection of workers in their employment from risks resulting from factors adverse to health; the placing and maintenance of workers in an occupational environment adapted to physical and mental needs; the adaptation of work to humans.

In other words, occupational health and safety encompasses the social, mental and physical well-being of workers, that is the whole person. Successful occupational health and safety practice requires the collaboration and participation of both employers and workers in health and safety programmes, and involves the consideration of issues relating to occupational medicine, industrial hygiene, toxicology, education, engineering safety, ergonomics, psychology, etc. Occupational health issues are often given less attention than occupational safety issues because the former are generally more difficult to confront. However, when health is addressed, so is safety, because a healthy workplace is by definition also a safe workplace. The converse, though, may not be true - a so-called safe workplace is not necessarily also a healthy workplace. The important point is that issues of both health and safety must be addressed in every workplace. By and large, the definition of occupational health and safety given above encompasses both health and safety in their broadest contexts.

Definition of SOP
Standard Operating Procedures, also known as SOPs, are created to provide specific documentation for various processes, usually highly-technical processes. Businesses are finding that they lack this kind of documentation; either there has been inadequate process definitions altogether, or they have no documentation in place. When reviewing the existing documentation, it is important to know where a particular SOP may be needed, or that the SOP available is too technical or not current for most users to be able to use.

Standard Operating Procedure Structure

Any SOP has to list the procedure name and a description of what the goal or intention is of this procedure. It will also show the SLA level, since almost every procedure will have a service level

agreement (SLA), a major part of a service contract, where the level of service is formally defined and what is expected in terms of timely delivery of the procedure. The risk level will be defined in terms of how severe a failure would be and how many dependent products or procedures would be affected by such a failure. Finally, a SOP should include the estimated time of resolution (ETR), or the expected time taken to complete the procedure, the group or section responsible for doing this work, any dependencies on other SOPs and escalation guidelines, should the process become "stuck" in some way for whatever reason.

What is safety
The word safety refers to your freedom from danger, injury and damage, and to your personal security. The word safety has been used so often that many of you may think of it as a "Preaching Word", or a word that forces you to alter your ways or change bad WHAT SAFETY MEANS 1. Safety means a complete understanding of your work and knowledge of every step that must be taken (TSTI/AHA) and the realization that mistakes could be costly to yourself and to the company. 2. Safety means good judgment. Never rely on luck; always be prepared to cope with unexpected situations and being alert when following your routine. 3. Safety means consideration for the family that depends on you, for the company that employs you, and for your own welfare. 4. Safety means remembering the safety rules set up by your company and applying them every minute when you are on the job.

Work Environment A work environment can be identified as the place that one works. i.e. -in an office building in a cube, at home at the kitchen table, from a car or truck, at a construction site. All are work environments. We tend, however, to hear about "healthy work environments." This can point to other factors in the work environment, such as co-workers, air quality, ergonomic seating, management (the boss!), child care, parking, noise, and even the size of one's cube. A work environment doesn't require a job. It requires that work has to be done in some place. Say you need to do homework. Where do you do it? At school in study hall? At your kitchen table? On the floor at a friend's house? These can also be considered work environments.