Browsing by Author "Olsen K"
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- ItemEmployers' and employees' understanding of occupational health and safety risk in small businesses:a case study(2010-11-06) Pandey BR; Laird IS; Olsen K; Hasle P; Legg SJMany small businesses have hazardous work environments and exposures to significant occupational health and safety risks. Differences in understanding of risks by employers and employees are one of the factors leading to the hazardous work environment and risk exposures in small businesses. Employees generally describe “the tools of the trade” as the sources of risks of accidents and injuries, whereas employers generally identify “bad employees” or “bad luck” as the cause of accidents. It seems that employer and employees having the same or a shared understanding of occupational health and safety problems, their causal relations and the course of action is essential to remedy the work environment problems in the workplace. This paper describes a study that explores owner/managers’ and employees’ understandings of occupational health and safety risks in small business workplaces within the framework of the Local Theory of Work Environment. A case study of an independently operated restaurant and café in New Zealand employing 6-19 employees was undertaken.. Data was collected using participant-as-observer ethnographic observation of the workplace followed by semi structured interviews of the owner, a manager and more than fifty per cent of employees employed in the business. Preliminary findings based on interview data are reported in this paper. The results suggest that the owner/manager and employees mainly consider physical safety problems experienced by employees or food safety problems affecting the customers as the key work environment problems. The owner/manager and employees generally link common sense and breach of norms with the causal relation behind these problems. Social exchange and external certification, among others, are found to be prominent reasons for bringing to attention the perceived problems in the wider work environment context. Implicit individual element of action and explicit organizational element of action are recognised as the two courses of action remedying the occupational health and safety problems. Further studies can be directed at finding how a shared understanding of the OHS risks occurs and what influences this process.
- ItemHow to use programme theory to evaluate the effectiveness of schemes designed to improve the work environment in small businesses(IOS Press, 2012-10-30) Olsen K; Legg S; Hasle PDue to the many constraints that small businesses (SBs) face in meeting legislative requirements, occupational health and safety (OHS) regulatory authorities and other OSH actors have developed programmes which can reach out to SBs and motivate and assist them in improving the work environment. A number of conceptual models help to enhance our understanding of OHS interventions in SBs and their effectiveness. However, they have mainly been evaluated on output rather than the process relating to the change theory underlying the intervention, and hence have seldom been rigorously evaluated. Thus little is known about how particular features of SBs can be taken into account when designing and implementing national programmes. This paper shows how realist analysis and programme theory may be used as a framework for evaluating, developing and improving national intervention programmes for the improvement of the work environment and reducing injuries in SBs. It illustrates this for a specific New Zealand intervention: the Workplace Safety Discount scheme and its implementation in the agriculture sector. In practice, realist analysis should be performed during the planning, implementation and management stages so that ongoing findings can be fed back to the participant social actors to help them make appropriate changes to enhance the likelihood of success.
- ItemOccupational health and safety professionals strategies to improve working environment and their self-assessed impact(IOS PRESS, 2012) Olsen KResearch suggests that Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) practitioners have difficulty influencing the decision-making process because they are placed on the sidelines in the organisation. This paper analyses the strategies that OHS practitioners use to fulfill their job role and the impact they have on the working environment and OHS management systems. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten New Zealand OHS practitioners from mainly large private and public organisations about their job role, OHS tasks, strategies and their impact. The interviews were tape recorded, transcribed, entered into a qualitative data management programme and analysed thematically in relation to their strategies, barriers and their impact on the OHS management system and working environment. The analysis revealed that these OHS practitioners used multiple strategies - chosen in relation to the situation, the stakeholders and their own resources. They saw themselves as change agents or facilitators. They preferred to use a knowledge strategy, supported by an audit strategy. Their last resort was a regulation strategy. All of the practitioners had a positive impact on stakeholders' knowledge, attitude and behavior and on OHS management systems. Some practitioners improved the working environment but few were involved in introduction of new technology.
- ItemThe internal working environment practitioner's role in implementation of working environment policy instruments or programmesOlsen KThe role of the internal working environment or Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) practitioner has become important for the implementation of the non-prescriptive Robens type OHS legislation implemented in many developed countries since mid-1970s. The OHS practitioners’ role can be seen as the implementing OHS management systems that comply with legislation and that result in healthy and safe workplaces. Ten semi structured interview with internal OHS practitioners in larger New Zealand organisations were analysed to identify the role they had in the implementation of legislation and other OHS programmes. All practitioners saw their role as making sure that the organisation implemented OHS management systems that complied with the regulations. They focused mostly on hazard management, incident management and employee participation. The practitioners used OHS audit schemes to support the implementation and to push line management to take their role in management of OHS. They gained top management’s support and used that to support their work with line management. In organisations that were part of a larger concern the requirements from the concerns OHS department was used to influence local top management to accept the implementation of systematic OHS management. In New Zealand organisations an incentive scheme was used to influence top management to accept the implementation of the systematic OHS management. The OHS practitioner identifies the OHS goal he or she wanted to achieve and developed strategies that were adjusted if necessary when the first strategy was found insufficient to obtain the goal.