How the 'H' in OHS impacts workplace safety

Safety in the workplace is generally seen as a matter of providing a safety framework of situational risk assessment, mitigation procedures, appropriate physical safety devices and personal protection. But how often do we consider how the health of workers impacts the safety of the workplace?

What we're talking about here is personal wellness - not whether someone in the factory has the flu or whether a forklift driver has a sore knee from playing soccer on the weekend. It's much broader than that. Australia and New Zealand have ageing workforces, bringing the infirmities of ageing like heart disease and diabetes to the workplace. Adult obesity is also at alarming levels. These and other physical human conditions represent the diminishing wellness that threatens the safety of the workplace.

According to Dr Barry Gilbert, director of Public Health Management, such risks should be a real concern to companies: "Many coroner inquiries have identified the 'human element' in workplace deaths, stating that they could have been avoided had adequate attention been given to the wellness of workers."

"Our ageing population has a bearing on the wellness of the workforce, which directly impacts on safety. This is most significant in safety-critical occupations like driving a bus or truck, but impacts most other occupations too. Diabetes, for example, is in epidemic proportions. Many people are not aware of just how debilitating this multi-organ disease is. It's a leading cause of heart disease and can lead to blindness, kidney failure and loss of limbs. On top of the personal risks, prescribed medication had been known to render a diabetic unconscious - imagine the consequences of a diabetic crane or machine operator if they fell unconscious from their medication!"

Dr Gilbert strongly believes that many of these risks can be mitigated through a proactive approach to health screening: "Reporting poor health helps maintain safety in the workplace. This falls under the umbrella of health management which, if applied correctly, has the potential to dramatically improve workplace safety."

"It must be managed properly because of the varying attitudes to health screenings from staff. While most recognise the benefits it brings to them and their workplace, some see it as invasive and even discriminatory, fearing the results could jeopardise their employment."

Dr Gilbert points out an intriguing statistic from his extensive research. Employee participation in compulsory health screening is far less than voluntary screening. Apparently, 70-80% buy-in is typical when voluntary, largely driven by peer pressure rather than management pressure to have health tests.

"Technology has done a lot in this area to help minimise workplace safety risks," continues Dr Gilbert. "A hundred years ago, we didn't have the health screen technology to identify the invisible conditions of humans, but today we can make the invisible visible. In just the last two years, new technologies have been developed to make health screening less invasive and less costly. For example, in testing cholesterol levels, one of the big contributors to heart disease and deaths at work, we can provide immediate feedback to people so they can take appropriate actions to address and even reverse their situation. Conventional screening only measured cholesterol, but the disease of concern is really blockage to critical arteries of the heart or brain. Modern screening can visualise these blockages thereby making the invisible visible. More importantly, lowering cholesterol can reverse the process."

"Workplace health screening should be addressed at three levels - institutional (organisation), group and individual for a sustained impact in effecting a safer workplace. The workplace is a great place to re-educate people about their health because it's a captive population and you can influence the culture for better health. More people should realise that we're in a new century and new technologies can aid us in our personal and professional lives. We just need to use them."

A key aspect to the success of a workplace health management system is the deployment of 'minimum intervention techniques' following health screenings. Dr Gilbert explains: "This can be as simple as outlining to people in basic terms the consequences of various health conditions, at both personal and workplace levels. This leads to greater awareness and increased peer pressure (and support of course) to be more health conscious, which influences that sort of culture within the workplace. Obesity, for example, is an emerging condition that can be positively influenced through these techniques. More needs to be done about obesity as a matter of urgency, because it's demonstrative of our society's overall denial of poor health."

Applying the law of diminishing returns to health screening, it should be an obvious path to take. The more time and resources a company spends in health screening, the less it will have to screen over time. It has the potential to be a cost-effective means of mitigating safety risks that safety practitioners should consider factoring into their programs.

Dr Gilbert has been researching the impact of heart risks on the workplace for the past 20 years and will be presenting a paper on this topic at the forthcoming Safety In Action Conference in April/May in Melbourne. His company, Public Health Management, delivers specialised public health and occupational medicine services in Victoria, with networks throughout Australia and New Zealand.