The Importance of Managing the Work Environment for Employees

Why is managing work, health and safety challenging for people managers and organisations?

For an organisation to run successfully, it is necessary for every manager to take great precautions about the importance of the employees. Every organisation set up rules and regulations that define the amount of work done by the employees along with the policies related to health and safety (D’Cruz, Noronha and Beale 2014). Maintaining such, policies in an organisation pose a huge challenge for a manager. This is because managers have to ensure that the employees perform their work in a safe environment. The essay highlights the challenges that managers, organisation faces while undertaking, implementing workplace health, and safety. The essay analyses the concepts, importance along with the type of work done and related health and safety practices that organisations need to adopt.

One of the most important aspects of an organisation is managing the work that is done. To do this it is necessary that organisations and managers maintain a proper work environment for the employees. According to Gallagher and Underhill (2012), proper work environment refers to the satisfaction of job role, support from the employees and employers along with the safety of the employees. Maintaining a proper work environment can help in motivating the employees. This can lead to an increase in the efficiency of work. Every manager needs to understand that the employees are the ultimate assets of an organisation. The fact that these employees need to be well attended is important for an organisation to achieve success in the competitive environment.

According to Shann, Martin and Chester (2014), the mentality of the employees need to be such that they find the workplace safe. They need to find it challenging and seek for continuous improvement in the organisation. However, managers tend to face certain challenges in maintaining a proper workplace. This may result due to various reasons ranging from issues with employees to financial instability. For example, due to lack of financial stability, managers of a manufacturing organisation may fail to provide effective safety equipment to employees. This may lead to problems in the organisation as the health of the employees may be compromised.

As stated by Hanley and O’Rourke (2016) one of the most prominent forms of unethical behaviour at a workplace is workplace bullying. Mainly the senior people indulge in workplace bullying as they have more experience as compared with the junior members. This gives them an opportunity to stamp their authority on the junior employees. This leads to lack of cooperation among the employees, and consequently lead to loss of young talent. Managing such bullies is an important duty of the managers. Managers need to make clear rules that suggest the consequences of bullying at the workplace. These rules need to be presented at the billboards.

Challenges Faced by Managers in Maintaining a Safe Workplace

Bullying may even lead to possible health hazards as the pranks of the senior employees may turn serious especially in manufacturing organisations that involve the presence of heavy equipment. Apart from this, other challenges that are faced by a manager in terms of getting employees to work are the motivation factor. Employees often have the notion that managers are not supportive and do not value the work done. This leads to insecurity in the job and leads to employees being ineffective (Smith and Kelloway 2016). Thus, it is the duty of the managers to ensure that such thoughts do not exist in the minds of the employees.

The health of the workers is important, as the employees need to be fit to perform work efficiently. Health at a workplace refers to taking good care of the employees, and ensuring that proper equipments are maintained to provide any medical attention. It is seen that every organisation aspires to keep a healthy environment by ensuring that the health of the employees is checked. Walsh (2013), medical examination or medical records indicates the current and past health status of an individual. This can help an organisation and the managers to understand the physical and mental abilities of an organisation.

It can be said that such analysis is done by the organisations to hire employees. In this regard, further importance about the health of the employees is stated by the rules that need to be followed by an organisation. Every organisation needs to ensure that the health protocols are maintained so that employees do not feel reluctant to seek employment (Reason 2016). For example, it is mandatory for organisations to maintain a medical facility compete with medical equipment. This is important for avoiding and solving any hazards that may occur in the workplace. However, the managers in terms of ensuring that the health of the workers is maintained face certain challenges.

One of the challenges that the managers may face is the finances. To ensure that proper health is maintained, it is important for every manager to maintain a medical facility. This may be difficult due to low financial status. According to Barak (2016), this can lead to challenges at the work place, as employees may not feel comfortable working in such places. Apart from this, other challenges faced by the managers include the carelessness of the employees. It can be seen that employees may fall ill at the work place owing to excessive stress. Scholars argue that such conditions normally arise due to the excess pressure from the managers.

Unethical Behaviour at the Workplace: Workplace Bullying

However, on most occasions, it is seen that employees fail to take the pressure situations. Thus, this leads to problems in the workplace and managers have to monitor the progress of the employees. Reese (2015) stated that the occupational health hazards might lead to a violation of a law. Hence, it is important for every organisation to maintain proper health ethics code so that the employees can remain. Managers also need to ensure that the safety of the employees is maintained. This is required to ensure that the employees do not suffer from any accident that may hinder his growth and career as a professional.

The safety of the employees is important to ensure that the employees do not suffer from any accidents. According to LaMontagne et al. (2009), it is important for every organisation to ensure that safety in every department is maintained. It is to be noted that the safety concerns not only involves the health of the employees. It also involves mental peace of the employees in the organisations. For example, the duty of the managers is to ensure that none of the employees is harassed in terms of gender, colour or ethnicity. Thus, managers need to ensure that the safety practices of an organisation are maintained in every department. Hence, safety is another important factor that every manager needs to ensure in an organisation.

Zohar (2014) argues that safety needs to be provided from the natural environment as well. In places like Australia, weather fluctuations occur frequently. Hence, managers need to provide extra facilities that can help the employees reach the work place in a safe manner. Apart from this, in manufacturing industries, safety needs to be maintained from the equipment. For this, protective gear and proper training on the use of materials need to be provided. In doing so challenges may be faced that may have a negative impact on the organisations and the managers.

One such challenge includes providing all the employees with proper safety equipment. Often it is seen that organisations fail to deliver to proper safety equipment due to the lack of finance. Organisations tend to focus more on purchasing innovative items rather than concerning the safety of the employees. Maintaining the work place satisfaction along with the safety of the employees may become challenging for such managers, as the finance needs to be divided equally between both the factors (Yazdani et al. 2015). However, it is to be kept in mind that work place safety as well as good work place environment co-exists together. Hence, managers need to ensure that managing both the factors is done in an effective manner. 

Importance of Maintaining Good Health of Employees

Apart from this, another challenge that is faced in terms of safety of the employees is the lack of co-operation from the employees (Hanley and O’Rourke 2016). Often it is seen that employees tend to take a particular action casually and proceed to continue with a task without proper safety precautions. This provides risk to the employees as accidents may happen at any time. Hence, the risk taken by the employees are not justified. In order to prevent this, managers need to install the importance of safety among the employees. Proper training classes need to be provided to overcome such casualness.

Thus, it can be concluded that managers need to remain aware of the factors that affect the satisfaction of employees. Maintaining work culture and proper work place environment also involves maintaining the health and safety. Every manager and organisations need to ensure that the financial stability is maintained so that they can cover the medical needs of the employees. Providing proper protective gear and maintaining medical facilities are important for the success of every organisation. Training employees is another factor that needs to be undertaken in order to ensure that challenges faced by the managers are mitigated.

References

Barak, M.E.M., 2016. Managing diversity: Toward a globally inclusive workplace. Sage Publications.

D’Cruz P., Noronha, E. and Beale, D. 2014, ‘The Workplace Bullying-Organizational Change Interface: Emerging challenges for Human Resource Management’, International Journal of Human Resource Management, Volume 25, No. 10, pp. 1434–1459.

Gallagher, C. and Underhill, E. 2012, ’Managing Work Health and Safety: Recent Developments and Future Directions’, Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, Volume 50, No. 2 (Special Issue), pp. 227-244.

Hanley, G M. and O’Rourke, A. 2016, ‘The Race Without a Finishing Line: Legislative Means for Confronting Bullying in the Australian Workplace’, Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, Volume 54, No. 3 pp. 352-368.

LaMontagne, A D., Smith, P M., Louie, A M., Quinlan, M., Shoveller, J., and Ostry, A S. 2009, ‘Unwanted Sexual Advances at Work: Variations by Employment Arrangement in a Sample of Working Australians’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Public Health, Volume 33, No. 2 pp. 173-179.

Reason, J., 2016. Managing the risks of organizational accidents. Routledge.

Reese, C.D., 2015. Occupational health and safety management: a practical approach. CRC press.

Shann, C., Martin, A., and Chester, A. 2014, ‘Improving Workplace Mental Health: A Training Needs Analysis to Inform Beyondblue’s Online Resource for Leaders’, Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, Volume 52, No. 3, pp. 298-315.

Smith, S L. and Kelloway, E K. 2016, ‘Respect in the Workplace: An Evaluation of a Short Online Intervention Program’, Journal of Organizational Effectiveness: People and Performance, Volume 3, No. 4 pp. 395-410.

Walsh, J. 2013, ‘Gender, the Work-Life Interface and Wellbeing: A Study of Hospital Doctors’, Gender, Work & Organization, Volume 20, No. 4 pp. 439-453.

Yazdani, A., Neumann, P., Imbeau, D., Bigelow, P., Pagell, M., Theberge, N., Hilbrecht, M. and Wells, R., 2015. How compatible are participatory ergonomics programs with occupational health and safety management systems?. Scandinavian journal of work, environment & health, 41(2), pp.111-123.

Zohar, D., 2014. Safety climate: Conceptualization, measurement, and improvement. The Oxford handbook of organizational climate and culture, pp.317-334.