“L-Eroj Mhux Imsemmija”
On the 13th of September, Deputy Prime Minister Dr Chris Fearne presented the Occupational Health and Safety Authority (OHSA) CEO with the commemorative coin “Heros of the pandemic”. This coin is being awarded to all health care workers and OHSA employees in recognition of their work during the Covid-19 Pandemic. Everyone is aware of the excellent work carried out by the health care professionals and the OHSA however very little information can be found on the work implemented by local Occupational Health and Safety Practitioners working independently or employed by companies to ensure the health, safety and business continuity at the workplace.
I made contact with a few of my peers to write this blog post about the roles and responsibilities of the health and safety practitioners during the covid-19 pandemic. As such I would like to thank amongst others, Daniel Cassar and Antoine Cutajar for their input and insights.
In multinational companies, work started way before the Covid-19 pandemic started in Malta. The health and safety departments of different countries started meeting beforehand to discuss how covid-19 is impacting the business and health and safety of the companies where the pandemic had already started. By doing so the companies which were in countries where the pandemic had not yet emerged could prepare and implement measures in anticipation of the coming issues. Such measures included a review of the current risk assessments, review of the cleaning regime, increasing the stock of PPE (both for the pandemic and usual business), segregation of shifts to ensure business continuity and the implementation of a Covid-19 Emergency Plan which included all the relevant measures. As guidance and legislation were still missing at this time, all decisions were based on risk assessments and research carried out on international guidance and legislation, by the same practitioners.
Communication was key throughout all the stages of the pandemic. Practitioners in the industry worked with both management and the workforce to ensure that proper information was disseminated throughout the company. This was carried out by implementing training programs, online meetings, information bulletins and distribution of surveys. As a result of these communication campaigns, it was possible to answer questions and doubts from the workforce and prevent mass hysteria arising from false information popping up all over the internet.
Mental health and psychosocial risks were always being considered during the implementation of the emergency plan and the publishing of communication. The practitioners were aware that the way the information may be interpreted may give rise to occupational stress. Furthermore, although it was made sure that the companies were compliant with legislation and guidelines, suggestions put forward by other people which were “holier than the Pope” and other “measures” being implemented by third parties, not in line with research and guidelines, were not put forward to management or implemented. The reasoning for not implementing these suggestions was not always easy to explain, however, if the non-factual measures were implemented, the same may have had unnecessary business implications or negative effects on employees as the pandemic progressed.
As part of travelling risk assessments, the measures of different countries where people from multi-national companies were travelling to had to be reviewed. The health and safety practitioner made sure that only necessary travel was allowed, the risk to the country of destination was acceptable and that the travelling employee faced no surprises such as an unexpected quarantine and missed flights.
Later into the pandemic, when the governments started to ease off on restrictions, the health and safety practitioners needed to revise their risk assessments to ensure that such relaxation of measures are implemented accordingly. It was and still is, a top priority for the health and safety practitioners to ensure that the measures ranking high in the hierarchy of controls, such as social distancing, provision of barriers and cleaning, are not taken lightly and are still practised at the workplace.
The work of the health and safety practitioners served as an intermediary between the government who implemented guidelines and legislation, the management and the workforce. Legislation and guidelines were translated into layman’s terms and into different formats so that they can be understood by all the workforce and management.
The health and safety practitioner is not always the person seen in a high visibility vest and a white helmet at construction sites, in bigger companies they are usually the ones working in the background, preparing and implementing policies, drawing up risk assessments, carrying out research and preparing proposals and providing suggestions to the management so that adequate and wise decisions can be taken.
“L-Ilqugħ”
