Employee Safety and Health

A human resources manager handles hiring, firing, payroll and benefits. The safety
professional oversees lockout/tagout, fall protection, machine guarding and personal protective
equipment. The two dont often interact. Maybe they should. Both HR and safety are a support
function for a larger operation and have similar mission objectives: ensure effective work
processes while complying with the law. Although an employers safety and HR departments
dont necessarily need to work together to achieve their goals, failure to do so may come at a
cost.
If they dont work together, employers will only get so far in developing their safety culture,
said Debra Parent, president and owner of Right Fit Recruiting, a Massachusetts-based HR and
safety consulting firm.
Avoiding separation
Historically, many safety departments have grown out of HR. Parent outlined a typical
scenario: A small company may not need a safety professional right away, so HR gets assigned
safety as a type of miscellaneous responsibility. As a result, some organizations may not give full
attention to safety. In this type of situation, HR professionals need to be self-aware enough to
recognize that they require assistance, said Richard Grandzol, owner of the Philadelphia-area
safety consulting firm Safety smith Inc.
The biggest concern for many small employers is the bottom line. Although bringing in a
safety professional instead of relying on the HR department may affect the bottom line, Grandzol
said, ignoring the need for a dedicated safety professional can be more costly. One small
company without a safety pro he was brought in to help had recently received a surprise OSHA
inspection that resulted in a $22,000 fine.
When you have 16 employees, thats almost having to give up an employee to pay that fine, he
said.
When a company grows large enough to justify a dedicated safety professional, safety and HR
usually become separate departments. According to Parent, this division is where problems can
begin. When HR and safety are split into different departments, she said, they may fail to
communicate or work together. They even may begin to work against one another.
For example, HR may want to incentivize workers to become more productive. Depending on
the type of incentive, the program could negatively affect the development of a positive safety
culture by emphasizing production over safety performance, Parent warned.

Obviously, their interests in complying with safety rules are going to be minimal and their
injuries are going to be high, she said.
Its important for a safety professional to play a role or provide input in HR decisions such as
incentive programs, training, hiring and promotions issues that may be at the core of a
companys safety culture. If the safety officer cant touch any of that ... theyre going to get
nowhere, Parent said.
Take promotions and advancements, for example. If employees being promoted have the greatest
output but their safety record is ignored, the employer is sending the message that productivity is
more important than safety, according to Parent. This can affect a companys safety culture for
years.
A strong HR leader will play a role in any advancement or promotion within the company, Parent
said. If that HR professional has a solid understanding of occupational safety, or works close
with the safety professional, he or she likewise will not promote workers who fail to emphasize
safety.
Overlapping responsibilities
Several aspects of safety and HR may overlap, which highlights the importance of the two units
working together closely, said George Bou, human resources vice president at Stiles Corp., a
real estate development company in Fort Lauderdale, FL. Bou is a member of the Society for
Human Resource Managements Special Expertise Panel, and spoke to Safety+Health on behalf
of the Alexandria, VA-based membership organization.
One example is employee misbehavior. Employee horseplay or bullying has a workplace safety
component, and the safety professional should be involved in resolving the case. However, Bou
recommended that HR take the lead on correcting the situation, as disciplinary action may need
to be taken. The safety professional also may lack the knowledge to handle any potential legal or
liability issues involved, he added.
Another gray area is alcohol and drug abuse. Clearly, any worker under the influence poses a
safety hazard. Safety and HR professionals should work together on the issue, especially if a
supervisor plans to terminate the worker HR can help ensure the dismissal is handled
professionally to avoid a lawsuit.
Parent said some HR professionals lack basic safety knowledge, including what might constitute
a recordable injury. Considering that in many organizations HR is responsible for a variety of
recordkeeping duties, this lack of knowledge could become problematic.

Over the years, Grandzol has worked with employers that did not have a dedicated safety
professional. The HR staff was very knowledgeable on workers compensation issues but may
not have understood that not every OSHA recordable is a workers comp injury. As such, some
injuries may have been left off the log.
Their HR person often wears the safety hat, and they really dont get a lot of outside training or
assistance. So theyre kind of left to their own, Grandzol said, adding that this leads to a gap in
compliance.
To avoid potential recordkeeping violations or mistakes, Bou recommends that project
managers or field supervisors who are closer to the incident fill out the report. The oversight
of safety data itself, such as incident reports or OSHA logs, should go under the safety
professionals umbrella and not HR, he said. However, he stressed the importance of keeping HR
in the loop.
As a general guideline, if its something that touches on employment law, then it should be
under human resources, Bou said. If it touches on OSHA and specific safety and health
regulations, then it should be under safety.
But even when employers follow this rule of thumb, its important for safety and HR to keep
each other apprised of what they are working on, he said.
Don Dressler, a consultant in California, brought up a third component that must work with
safety and HR: line management. Whos going to do the hazard inspection, the safety training?
Whos going to know if the guy actually learned it? he asked.
In those cases, HR, safety and management need to work together to ensure workers are
receiving appropriate training and following that training regularly, Dressler said.
Dressler suggested that a correlation exists between safety and what HR can do: If people arent
happy on the job, they are less likely to be safe because they may not be focused on tasks. Thus,
an HR program that helps keep employees happy can have a direct impact on workplace safety.
And the reverse is true as well. Theres nothing like focusing on safety to emphasize to
employees their importance and value, Dressler said.
Supporting the safety culture
Most HR professionals dont readily see the connection between their field and safety,
Parent claims. Part of the problem, she said, may be that HR professionals arent always
interested in doing more than HR-related work particularly if the employer has a safety
professional on staff. In these situations, its incumbent on the safety manager to teach HR how it
can help support the safety culture.

HR involvement in safety creates an opportunity to improve performance, including

through reduced injury costs, Parent said. HR professionals can make an impact by keeping
safety in mind when hiring to ensure employees brought on board have the right attitude and can
positively contribute to the culture. Parent recommends that employers train all HR professionals
on safety basics, including how to complete OSHA injury reports. This is especially important if
safety falls under HR duties.
Grandzol notes that such training could help HR professionals understand the connection
between occupational safety and workers comp an area that usually falls under HR and lead
them to want to learn more.
Safety managers, on the other hand, dont necessarily need HR training, according to Parent.
However, safety professionals should make sure theyre tapping into the HR infrastructure to use
all of the tools in a safety culture, she said.
Organization
Given the potential overlap between a safety and HR professional, can a company make
do with one individual doing both tasks? It depends on the employer, Parent said. In nearly every
case, an employer will need an HR manager to handle payroll, benefits and other similar duties.
For employers in a low-hazard environment, such as an office building, the HR position likely
would cover safety issues. And small employers without the resources to hire a dedicated safety
professional will assign the safety responsibility to HR.
However, in a larger company or one with a more high-hazard work environment a
construction site or manufacturing facility, for example the employer should invest in a
separate individual focused on occupational safety.
Otherwise, Bou warned, the HR professional could become overwhelmed covering both HR
and safety.
Understanding all the employment laws and then understanding all the OSHA requirements
its a lot to know, Bou said. Someone who has to wear both those hats would be quite tasked
to really understand all that entails.
In his experience, Grandzol said, many HR professionals recognize that they know little about
occupational safety and breathe a sigh of relief when a safety professional is brought in. Once
this happens, however, the two professionals must cooperate.
Parent believes that having the safety professional operating under the HR manager is a natural
development, as an employers safety program quite often begins inside HR.

If the safety professional reports to the operations manager, a conflict of interest or an us versus
them mentality can result. Parent compared it to quality control reporting to a production
manager nothing may get done because production will be the priority, not safety or quality.
For cases in which safety personnel does not report to HR, Parent recommends that the
department report directly to ownership. Bou suggests that the safety department report to a
senior-level employee, such as a vice president, and not a lower-level operations manager
because that will leave the department ineffective. And Grandzol recommends the HR and safety
professionals report to the same person to ensure the two departments are cooperating.
Regardless of how an employers departments are organized, having safety professionals and HR
professionals work together is key to improving safety culture. If you have human resources
thats completely oblivious to safety culture development, or theyre not having any part of, the
safety department is just going to be a sideline business and never have any impact, Parent said.

HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGEMENT

Employee Safety and Health

GROUP 7
Tiffany Dwi Putri
Masrita Komala Sari

Mahyal Mardiah
Puti Suri Alifah

FACULTY OF ECONOMIC
ANDALAS UNIVERSITY
2016/2017