Overview:

The following are key components, and are exemplified with materials from the Synergee system:

Risk Assessment

• A risk assessment should be conducted every two years and reviewed annually. All major new developments and acquisitions should be similarly assessed before final approval.
• Occupational exposure limits (OEL’s) should, at the very least, comply with South African legal standards or, where these do not exist, with standards laid down by (in descending order of preference):


• The US National Institute for Occupational Health and Safety (NIOSH).
• The American Conference of Governmental and Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH).
• The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).

Safety programme:

All factories should have an agreed safety programme, the intention behind which is to achieve a continuous decrease in the disabling injury frequency rate.

Medical screening and surveillance

The minimum requirements for the Occupational Health Surveillance Programme are set out in section 3. There is a general aspect as well as specific programmatic objectives such as for example, Chemical Safety, Hearing Conservation and Driver Health.

Employee training - induction, further education and responsibility:

• All employees should undergo induction training and be provided with specific information on hazards and risks incurred at the workplace and safe working procedures for each job category. Employees should regularly undergo needs-driven health awareness and safety education and training as part of ongoing training and development.
• Responsibility for health, safety and environmental protection should be an objective in each employee’s job description and an important consideration in performance reviews.

The Health information system

• A Health Information System (HIS) will provides the basis for a periodical analysis of health outcomes. Such analyses could be conducted at any time with any periodicity. Annual statistics should show trends towards a reduction in the incidence of accidents and diseases if the OHP is making an impact.

The first priority of the Occupational Health Programme is to conduct an initial formal Health Risk Assessment HRA, in which all Health, Safety and Environmental hazards are identified and evaluated. This evaluation should include the potential effects of the hazards as well as the degree to which employees are exposed to these hazards, thereby enabling a quantification of their risks. Further details regarding this procedure are to found in the HRA guidelines document.

The picture on the right can be seen more clearly by clicking on it. It gives a schematic view of the Health Risk Assessment process.

The HRA comprises

• workplace-based risk assessments (See the WREP section of the HRA document)
• employee-based risk assessments (See the OREP section of the HRA document)
• hazardous biological agents (HBA) risk assessments

When the employee-based risk assessments are conducted, the operational standards (human resource job fitness standards) required for the company's occupations should be investigated and specified. This important component is known as standard-setting.

There should be periodic review of the HRA of materials, processes, projects and working procedures to assist management in the continuing protection of health of workers and company compliance with health and safety recommendations and legislation.

The outcomes of the employee-based risk assessments and the HCS and HBA risk assessments provide the required information to the medical team to enable the design and implementation of the Medical Screening programme, in which job fitness evaluation and individual screening of individuals for adverse effects is conducted.

The results of the HRA and the Medical Screening programmes generate valuable data that should be fed into appropriate software (the Health Information System) that is able to conduct analyses by groups or group surveillance, and to seek to identify trends and track progress with prevention.