Tamil Nadu - Chennai   

Health `key to workplace productivity'

By Our Staff Reporter

CHENNAI, AUG. 8. An amendment to the Tamil Nadu Factories Rules of 1950 now requires that medical officers in hazardous industries must have a diploma in industrial health.

The order has recognised a one-year PG diploma course in industrial health conducted by Sri Ramachandra Medical College and Research Institute, Porur.

This announcement was made at a workshop on occupational health for human resource professionals and medical practitioners, organised by the Tamil Nadu branch of the Indian Association of Occupational Health. The Chennai chapter of the National Institute of Personnel Management and The Hindu co-sponsored the workshop.

In the pursuit of growth and profit, the welfare and safety of employees who spent a third of their waking hours at the factory cannot be ignored. Their safety and emotional well-being is important since a healthy workforce increased productivity, said Viji Santhanam, joint managing director, Brakes India, who inaugurated the day-long workshop here today on the theme ``reactivate health and safety at work''.

Human resource professionals must sensitise senior management, emphasise the need for training and education of employees and institutionalise safety measures at workplace before the measures became mandatory, he said.

Workers in new industries such as information technology and call centres suffered from stress and there were instances of suicide.

These were grey areas that challenged the medical and HR professionals.

He urged them to bring about a change in the people's attitude to safety.

The HR professionals must address the challenges posed by changing industrial and manufacturing processes.

Supervisors and safety officers must go through checklists, analyse the cause of every near-miss accident and prevent recurrence.

Companies could do a survey of employee satisfaction to assess the morale of the workforce.

Quality consciousness and emphasis on international standardisation increased customer awareness.

Some Scandinavian countries now highlighted the need for occupational health and safety standards at workplaces.

Proactive measures were needed since workplace health and safety standards may be required soon even in our country, he said.

N. Murali, joint managing director of The Hindu , highlighted the need to introduce broad-based worker assistance initiative and urged doctors, HR professionals, management consultants and non-government organisations to support the effort in making the best of a win-win situation where society, the management and the worker benefited.

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