What is Workplace Health and Safety (WHS)

Occupational health and safety (OHS) systems are designed to identify and minimize risks at the workplace. A thriving business community should seek to create jobs, wealth, good leadership, safe, and healthy working conditions that are essential for production of goods and provisions of services. Therefore, managers have a legal and moral duty to safeguard the health and safety of those who work for them, and the exercise of these duties needs to be seen as central to the role of leadership. There is a growing interest among researchers and organizational practitioners about occupational safety in recent years. The chapter provides an exhaustive discourse on the relevance of occupational health and safety systems in modern day workplaces as well as the nexus between management leadership and occupational health and safety. It highlights the guiding principles to leadership and key issues in efficient administration of OHS. The chapter concludes by recommending the role leaders should play to improve safety and health in the workplace.