Organization’s exist to produce the goods and services demanded of them by their customers and

clients. If they do not do this and do it profitably, they will go out of business or, in the case of public
sector organization’s, there will be political and/or management changes to ensure that they do.
Therefore, the primary objective of management in a competitive and cost-conscious environment will
be to achieve those goals. Under this way of looking at organization’s, health and safety represents a
cost, which might be regarded as a non-productive cost in that it does not directly contribute to the
efficient provision of goods and services. As a result, in many organizations’, health and safety is not a
priority of management. Instead, it may be seen as conflicting with the need to increase production, to
pursue higher sales figures or to cut costs.

Behavioral Issues
For occupational health and safety practice to work successfully, the collaboration and participation of
both workers and employers in health and safety matters. However, most measures rely, to a greater or
lesser degree on the actions of workers to make them effective.

But unfortunately, this is a major source of weakness. It has been estimated that 60% of the accidents
are caused by human actions ( or lack of actions ), with the main reason for this being ignorance,
carelessness or incompetence.

There are several factors which can influence this:

• Conflicts between individual or group goals and the requirements of health and safety – for example,
the pursuit of higher levels of output to attract bonus payments, working excessive numbers of hours, or
simply patterns of social interaction which may cause distraction or loss of attention.

• Individual characteristics and suitability for the job – including physical or mental characteristics,
knowledge and skills, temperament, personality, etc.