SAFETY ORGANIZATION

Every industry must have a safety organisation with well defined objective and well identified functions. It has been experienced that safety policies often fail if safety functions are distributed or made part of activities of several departments. Under the system of distributed responsibilities the safety functions have often been reported to corporate managers through personnel and human resource department, operational office or legal office. Such practices had often obliterated the successful implementation of safety programmes. Safety functions become successful if they are controlled by a single department with safety personnel interacting with other activities functionally.

A top level corporate manager must supervise safety organisation in a large industry. Safety director or manager at industry level may report to corporate manager. There may be several managers reporting to safety director who would look after special safety functions such as fire, environment, occupational health, claim for compensation etc. These managers will necessarily interact with all other departments wherever workers are involved. A safety person should not be a narrow specialist but a broad basqd expert with human values as main plank. Teamwork and cooperation with others are other attributes required for a successful safety person. A suitable organisation chart for large and highly safety conscious industry is shown in Figure 1.1. This figure clearly specifies the safety functions comprehensively and four levels of responsibility are identified. They are described below.

(i) Level 1 This is a corporate level and there should be a company director who will be engaged in formulating safety policies at corporate level. These policies will be issued from time to time if changes are made. He will have to see that safety audits are made at proper times. He must be readily available for required advice and guidance to all safety personnel. The company d' .rector must appoint a general manager safety at company level.

(ii) Level 2 This is at company level and will directly report to the corporate director. He has to continuously monitor safety policies of the company and bring about necessary improvement in the light of directives issued from time to time. He must also see that the directives and policies are in accordance with governmental regulatory standards. He should provide guidance and assistance for training of safety personnel at various levels and must conduct.

(iii) Level 3 This level works at plant level and would directly report to general manager safety. There must be four plant safety managers as identified by four plant safety functions, namely fire safety, environmental control, occupational health and professional service. Specific conditions and size of plant may dictate combining two or three of these functions under a single plant level manager but in all cases the functions should remain separate and , identifiable. The development of procedure of implementing safety measures on job performing and analysing safe job performing, readiness and preparedness to deal with emergency situations are the main requirements at I this level. Equally importantly it is the level where interactions with other activities are most likely to take place. Thus a plant manager will coordinate with managers in the areas of design, manufacture, purchase, sale, R & D, etc. A plant manager will have the full responsibility to investigate the injuries to a worker occumng on joblsite and make report to the higher officials. 1

(iv) Level 4 This level comprises representatives of safety departments working at shop floor level or with workers. The personnel will actually implement safety procedures, train workers on procedures, guide them to adoption of procedure. They will provide all support for maintenance of environment and its preservation. Very importantly the personnel at level 4 will conduct safety drills.