How effective are health and safety practices in the Water Services Corporation

Abstract

Purpose: The Water Services Corporation (WSC) has, in 2004, promoted the role of systematic methods of managing OHS through the adoption of a health and safety manual to serve as a guide for its employees (WSC 2004). It is the purpose of the study to examine issues related to the effectiveness or otherwise of the practices enshrined therein. Problem Statement: This study aims to examine the effectiveness of health and safety practices in the WSC. Model: Effectiveness evaluation (also known as outcome evaluation or summative evaluation), determines whether a safety initiative has had the intended effect (Dennis 1997). Although injuries are often measured in an effectiveness evaluation to determine whether the initiative has had an effect or not, there are two situations where this might not be the case. One of them arises from injury outcome data that is unreliable or invalid. In this case a surrogate measure of safety could be used (e.g., a checklist of safety conditions), if shown to be valid for the circumstances in which it will be used. The other situation is where the program's explicit objective is not to decrease injury incidence, but rather, some other objective such as improve worker or management competence or attitudes (Robson et al 2001). […]