* * *
Occupational health and safety are becoming more and more important in term of human resource management. On one hand, managers need to be familiar with the legal context. On the other hand, they also have to keep in mind a development of strategy to manage occupational health and safety. This essay will discuss some current occupational health and safety issues and how they affect human resource management.
Occupational health and safety refers to the physical, physiological and psychological conditions of an organization’s workforce, related to aspects of work and the work context. When setting organization’s goal and strategies, managers may have to take to consider occupational health and safety management as an influencing factor. As countries all over the world are integrating in globalization, the change in economic structure also has influence on the way of doing business. When more and more companies move from state-owned to private ones, they may have their own strategy to manage occupational health and safety which is more suitable for their own goal. China is an example. Before, China’s government has authority and is the one who sets regulations on standard conditions of workplace in state-owned company. Since China opened its market to join the global market, a lot of private companies as well as foreign companies were established. This led to the change in government’s laws and regulations related to occupational health and safety. It has been stated in article of Dara (2003) that government rules through unions and associations that also communicate with organizations through smaller ones. Each organization has its own department to take care the conditions related to