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Safety and employee health and wellbeing

Abstract:

This chapter explores how to improve integration of safety and health with each other as a necessary condition to support important individual and organizational outcomes. It focuses on aspects of wellbeing at work and determinants and outcomes in relation to safety and overall individual wellbeing. The chapter provides research linking safety and employee wellbeing identifies gaps in the current understanding of the role that employee wellbeing plays to attain safety outcomes. It discusses the wellbeing aspects seems to be secondary to physical health and there is scarce literature approaching the two topics together. The chapter argues that careful consideration of situational wellbeing elements pertaining to work versus long-term, general individual wellbeing helps to advance understanding of the role wellbeing plays in safety outcomes. It also argues for a more systematic understanding of the interplay between safety and wellbeing. Health and safety are not the sole responsibility of the Health and Safety Department, or of the Health and Safety professionals.