Room for improvement

While commending the Ministry of Labour for reviewing the Safety and Health at Work (SHaW) Act and for looking to incorporate new features in that legislation, a university professor says when compared to international best practice, there is still room for improvement.

Professor of Management and Organisational Behaviour, Dr. Dwayne Devonish says that the legislation which focuses mostly on environmental wellness, needs to expand its scope to include how to treat stress in the workplace among other things. His comments came as he made a presentation during a recent webinar on the National Workplace Wellness Policy.

“The Act still remains silent on the psychosocial environmental hazards... Outside of the physical environment which the Act actually caters to well, there is that part of the environment that deals with the psychological and social factors, things like change, role ambiguity [and] role conflict. There’s still workplace bullying happening in workplaces and I’ve done a number of studies on this. So environmental wellness has to take into account the psychosocial environment, how people relate to each other, that has to be explicit within the Act,” he said.

Professor Devonish added, “I believe the Act still needs to define what the environment is, in terms of breaking out in terms of the physical environment. It is still, I must agree, it is still focused on a very technical construction, factory operating environment and we need to consider posing within that Act, the remote working environment, because, as I said earlier, the employer still has a responsibility for the worker at home”.

Devonish said that best practices would suggest that wherever workers operate, whether it is their home or some other remote site, employers still have a responsibility for the health and safety of workers, as well as the overall wellness of their workforce.

“Now, but think about. We just had a hurricane/tropical storm recently, and because of our building codes for many of our residential housing stock, a lot of people were affected. Now think logically with me, if my home is my new place of work, and my roof has blown off, what kinds of responsibilities and I’m not stirring up a pot here, do employers have, if employers now require workers to work from home?”

He continued, “...In international best practices, employers usually would carry an inventory or checklist of things that should be in the home, and they have a responsibility to share that cost, the burden of cost. The professor said that the responsibility of employers when it comes to the home environment, which is now the new workplace for many, is a reality that has to be taken into consider, as workers are going to be using a lot more resources at home. (JRT)