When I was young, I heard “Work is Worship”, but I like to differ. In my years of working, when I look around, these days work is stressful. Worshipping brings peace, but the corporate cultures and other work related things, aren’t so peaceful. I don’t mean to portray a bad picture of a work place, don’t get me wrong, I just mean that work brings a lot of joys but not peace, so I don’t think it can be worship for most people. There is always a scope for improvement. Understanding this need ILO (International Labour Organization) observes 28th April as World Day for Safety and Health at work.
Its purpose is to raise awareness about promoting and creating a safe and healthy environment to work on global scale. They do so by formulating rules and places, by bringing attention to concerns. There motive is to ensure that we prevent global diseases and any occupational hazards.
The truth is that in today’s era, we spend a lot of our constructive time of our lives in our offices. So it is imperative to make office space, safe and conducive to good health. In regards to that this year the ILO is focusing on the countries ability to gather and then use OSH data effectively. No OSH is not another way of saying gosh, it stands for Occupational Safety and Health.
And in reality, we cannot find solutions, if we are not aware of the problem. So when we collect correct data is when the true picture comes out. What is happening, where things stand and what can be done to make it better for everyone.
OSH defines codes and policies in regards to the health at work. It covers a vast amount of information to be looked at to assist formulating better plans. Some of it includes personal data of employees and protection of it. It also requires documentation of any occupational accident any dangerous incident and much more.
This year the focus on OSH is also in tangent with sustainable developmental goals of UN. Per the 8.8 goal of it, which talks about gathering data about, ‘frequency rate of fatal and non-fatal occupational injuries, by sex and migrant status, OSH data will help in achieving the same.
What we hope to achieve is to be able to come with better prevention strategies, by being able to analyze the working conditions and their impact, we may foresee any upcoming hazards and accordingly devise a plan of action.
At the end of it, since it is for our benefit and betterment, I am happy to oblige and cooperate achieving the same. My only complaint is I would have preferred had it been a public holiday instead of just being an international observance. Perhaps in time, till then enjoy your day, make the most of it and beat the Monday blues. Signing off and getting up from the desk and here is something for you, some tips on Work place safety and healthy, hope this will be helpful!
