Course Makes Business Case for Health, Safety
The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) is making the business case for workplace safety and health through a course developed in conjunction with the National Safety Council and Williams College of Business at Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio. NIOSH supports the curriculum because it parallels a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention initiative to help business owners promote health and safety in the workplace, said Fred Blosser, spokesman for NIOSH and other CDC agencies.
“NIOSH has been working with partners in professional societies, industry, labor, and academia to highlight the importance of preventing work-related injuries and illnesses as a sound business investment for companies,” he said. The course for students at Xavier who are working toward their master’s degree in business administration is called Business Value of Safety and Health. It teaches executives-in-training that workers are an asset for a company in today’s marketplace and that investing in safety and health is more than the right thing to do – it’s the cost-effective thing to do, the instructors said.
“In the 1980s, I had tried to get this into the business and engineering schools to have students understand the business value, costs, and benefits,” said course co-developer Dr. Steve Wurzelbacher, a research industrial hygienist in the NIOSH Division of Surveillance, Hazard Evaluations and Field Studies. “The current economy puts a focus on why you should find ways to reduce costs wherever you can.” By taking a hard look at health and safety issues in the workplace, employers reduce waste, improve productivity and cut workers’ compensation costs, he said. The class also provides instruction on how to make a business sustainable and environmentally savvy to survive in the global economy.
The first series of the course was held January to May 2009 as a business administration elective in the MBA program at Xavier University. Satisfaction scores showed the course was well-received. Students were impressed with the value of such an applied and holistic approach to managing a company, instructors said. The class will be repeated again, starting in early 2010. In addition, a conference on the curriculum is planned for Oct. 28-29, 2010, at Xavier.
“We’re very interested in sharing the curriculum with other schools,” Dr. Wurzelbacher said. “We’re trying to teach what systems in health and safety mean for long-term economic viability,” said Dr. Jenny Fringes, a professor and co-developer of Business Value of Safety and Health. “We include environmental training and teach ways to practice sustainability. We have been finding that the research shows that these methods have positive effects on economic performance.
“The research says the methods will yield dollars and provide a better quality of life and sustainability of corporations and the earth itself. We’re looking at two layers of indications.”
The reports and analyses used in the course are based on companies that are lagging behind those demonstrating safer and healthier trends, an indicator of policy violations, she said.
“We’re coming from the aspect of, ‘How do you prevent accidents and unhealthy predicaments in the working environments of corporations?’” Dr. Fringes said. “That’s what we’re teaching to the future business leaders of the world.”.
