Occupational Health and Safety: Organizational and Individual Change for Health, Safety & Security

This study explores the organizational and individual change to encourage health, safety & security of the organization. It discusses successful drivers for change, theoretical framework, and approaches to individual and organizational change and impacts of safety culture on change.

Running Head: Occupational health and Safety
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Occupational health and safety
11/1/2018

Occupational health and safety 1
Introduction
This study explores the organizational and individual change to encourage health, safety &
security of the organization. Change is a continuous process, which involves transformation,
planned and unplanned changes in an organization. It is noticed that in today’s environment,
organizations are constantly introducing changes in reaction to internal and external stimuli.
It has been seen that some of these changes concentrate on methods and processes, some on
the structure of the organization, and others on innovative technologies. The success and
growth of the change management depend upon motivating employees to adapt, embrace, and
utilize a required change. The Workplace Safety and Health Act, 2006 is an act enacted by
Republic of Singapore associated to the welfare, safety, and well-being of individuals in a
workplace. It stresses to manage the health system proactively to take measures and prevent
from accidents in the course of work. To make a successful change, an individual or
organization should manage their skills, abilities, and knowledge to sustain change (Shanafelt
and Noseworthy, 2017).
It is essential to manage change because without this, the focus can be shifted and efficiency
as well as productivity declines. The organizational change management motivates and
guides employees to complete the work in a repeatable and manageable way. It is necessary
to bring and follow the necessary change in the organization (Biron and Karanika-Murray,
2014). In the following, an effort has been made to discuss successful drivers for change,
theoretical framework, and approaches to individual and organizational change and impacts
of safety culture on change.
Drivers for change
Change is an indispensable part of the organization. They measure the maximum efforts of all
people and implement new innovative technologies, procedures, methods, and overcoming
resistance to change (Lozano and von Haartman, 2018). The potential key drivers are
separated into two types i.e. internal and external drivers of change.
Internal Drivers of change
Employees need to maintain stability for change and adopt strategies to secure and promote
the health. They should give more emphasis on maintaining a health system and reform the
shape of preventive and wellness approaches to promote health and increased cooperation

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with other employees that concentrate on health outcomes. They need to raise capital and
mobilize long-term funding as the company is facing economic crises, which had a
significant influence on the capability of some organization to create workplaces to maintain
the safety and well-being of employees. The Workplace Safety and Health Act, 2006 is
enacted to provide right of safety culture and increase the liabilities of employee’s well-
being. It has been seen that poorly achieved major organizational change has a harmful and
long-term health effect (Kuipers et al., 2014).
External drivers of change-
The external factors, which influence the safety and well-being of employee performance, are
technological, industry competition, and political factors. It is seemed to retain the employees
and advances the technology, which are rapidly changing and responsibility in other areas
such as healthcare, globalization, and internal competition. Political factors instigated by
trade liberalization, deregulation of industries, and legislation required to manage the change
in the organization. Poor management of the rapid change has led to an adverse effect on
employee health and well-being in the organization (Lozano, 2015).
Theoretical Framework and Approaches to organizational change
Lewin’s Change Management Model
It has been identified that many healthcare organization utilized Kurt Lewin's change model
to understand that behaviour of the individual as it associates to change and patterns of
resistance of change. The Lewin’s model involves three different phases i.e. unfreezing,
moving, and freezing. The main intention of this model is to recognize the factors that can
disrupt the changes from occurring. There are forces that face changes, which are called static
forces and forces that drive or encourage change are known as driving forces (Al-Haddad and
Kotnour, 2015).
Unfreezing stage
The first stage of Lewin’s model is to understand the difficulties associated with the problem
are solved and approaches are advanced to support the driving force and reduce the
restraining forces. It identifies main players which will be influenced by the change and
assimilate them to communicate the ideas and maintain the list of all static and driving forces
that will influence the changes in the organization. It encourages a feeling of empowerment
that helps in overcome the resistance to change and promotes employees health and safety.

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The restraining forces may be lack of trust, staff resistance, unhealthy environment, and the
possibility of workarounds. The driving forces can be support from a higher level of
management, ease of use, time management, and financial investment (Bartunek and
Woodman, 2015).
Moving stage
The moving stage is where the actual change is in practice because of the equalization of the
diverse forces and permitting the driving forces to maintain the change. In this phase,
implementation produces the change and continues to keep communicating and manage the
changes to secure the health of employees. They should refer the change to the higher level of
management and develop those skills and competencies, which are, required to manage
change successfully (Hornstein, 2015).
Freezing stage
In this final change, once the change has occurred, it can be used to examine the overall
effectiveness and the stability of change within an organization. The process of freezing or
refreezing has provided support in respect to technology and health promotion to sustain with
the change. It can help in reducing the fear of change and stakeholder resistance through the
growth and active participation in the change procedure. They should ensure to encourage
adoption in achieving success and smooth implementation of the change in the organization.
This Lewin’s model has also helped to manage the behavioral change in the workplace
(Cummings, Bridgman and Brown, 2016).
Refreeze Unfreeze
(Freezing the desired change) (Preparing the desired change)
Change
(Szeto, 2017)

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McKinsey’s 7S Framework
McKinsey’s 7S Framework helps in facilitating and managing organizational as well as
individual change and implementing new strategies and approaches. It presents an emphasis
on hard and soft strategies as a key to achieving organizational performance. The goal of the
model shows seven elements of the company i.e. Strategy, Staff, Systems, Structure, Skills,
Style, and shared values, which are aligned together to accomplish effectiveness in an
organization.
‘Hard Ss’ ‘Hard Ss’
‘Soft Ss’ ‘Soft Ss’
(Cox, Pinfield and Rutter, 2018)
Strategy
It is a plan established by an organization to gain a sustainable competitive advantage and
stay in the market. The changes should be adopted to compete in the market. The strategy
should achieve its clear vision and it aligned to promote the health of every individual and
produce better results.
Systems
They are the procedures of the company, which reveals the business undertakings and
decision to manage and mitigate the changes effectively and efficiently (Ravanfar, 2015). The
system will determine the changes to be implemented and the focus for managers to manage
Structure
Systems
Style
Staff
Skills
Strategy
Shared
Values

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individual and organizational change. It also suggested taking care of every employee well-
being so that they also support in the growth of the company.
Structure
It represents the controlled framework maintained to divide the business units and organized
the structure of the organization. It is also one of the easy and viable to change elements of
the system. They should take care of employee’s nutrition, healthy food, and avoid stale food.
They should be very keen to indicate behavioural change among personnel and manage
resistance to change and address them effectively (Král and Králová, 2016).
Staff
Staff element is concerned with a number of employees in an organization, which are needed
to recruit, trained, motivated, and rewarded. They should be trained to provide healthy food
to their customers and of good quality so that their reputation can be enhanced. They should
be motivated to embrace the change management in the organization. As companies
introduce new technologies and not every employee can handle the change. Therefore, they
should be motivated to adopt these changes. For example, Sanitarium Health and Well-being
Company provide the best quality food to their customers and take care of every customer’s
health (Dixon, 2014).
Style
It represents the way by which the company is maintained by high-level managers to evaluate
the effectiveness in sustaining, developing, and maintaining a positive work environment. It
also describes the shared and common way of thinking and behaving to adapt to the changes
accordingly.
Skills
Their skills should be developed and maintained effectively to adapt to the changes. They are
the ability, which makes employees of the organization perform very well. They need to
embrace these changes to support improvement in health and well-being of employees.
Shared Value
Shared values are at the core of McKinsey 7s model, which are the rules and standard that
guide and controlled approaches and policies of change management in the organization.

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They should maintain a common purpose in securing the health of the employees, which
should be the main goal of the organization (Kotter-Grühn, Kornadt, and Stephan, 2016).
Kotter’s Theory
Kotter’s theory explains the process to lead change in the organization. It includes concepts
such as team building, organizational behaviour, communication, influence, and negotiation.
This theory comprises eight steps:-
1. Enhancing Urgency:-
 They should evaluate the opportunities that can be tapped through efficient
change interventions.
 They should involve and take the support of the employees of the
organization, stakeholders, and customers on the issue of change.
2. Forming the team:-
 They should recognize the effective change leaders in the organization and
commitment towards promoting health.
 They should build a strong team who can work as a team to encourage the
health and well-being of the workforce (Cooney, Pernick, Rice and Monago,
2016)
3. Develop a vision:-
 They should determine the core values; develop the ultimate vision, and the
approaches for managing change in an organization.
 They should develop the vision effectively to promote health programmes in
the organization to make awareness.
4. Communicate the ultimate vision:-
 They should communicate the vision in the organization to encourage
understanding and commitment to the new trend.
 They should handle the issues and concerns of an individual with full honesty,
integrity, and commitment.
 They should connect the vision to give training, improve their performance by
satisfying the customers and maintaining a positive image in the market
(Koya, Anderson, Sice and Kotter, 2015).
5. Empower action:-

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 They should remove obstacles and promote actions in the organization to
resist changing as the organization support more closely with the objectives of
the change effort.
 They should give reward and recognition for promoting change in respect to
health in the organization.
6. Generate Short-term Wins:-
 They should create many short-term targets, which are achievable and have
lesser chances of failure.
 For e.g. They can conduct a survey so that it can be examined as what number
of employees have good health and proper treatment can be provided to those
who are not healthy (Chappell et al., 2016).
7. Sustaining change:-
 They can achieve constant development by maintaining individual and
organizational change.
8. Anchor change:-
 They can ensure that change would be established successfully in the
organization and all the employees are happy with the change in the culture of
the organization.
 They should make more emphasis on acceptability for the change (Sallis,
Owen and Fisher, 2015)
Theoretical framework and approaches to individual change
Employee’s health is influenced by behaviour as they can be provided with convincing
arguments with opportunities to change the environment. They can reward people for
punishing them for unhealthy behaviour. It is a psychological model attempting to provide a
prediction of health behaviour through a focus on the beliefs and attitude of an individual.
Their objective is to maintain a long-term effect on a particular situation. Health conditions
and infections are related to risky behaviour, for example, Alcoholism, reckless driving, use
of tobacco, and obesity. Individual change behaviour affects both the individual and the
environment (Vaara, Sonenshein and Boje, 2016).
These theories share a main commonality in describing individual activities as the locus of
change. Behavioural change programs are concentrates on activities and undertaking that

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helps a person and society upon the risky behaviour and change management. The single
construct approaches to changing behaviour assume that changing aspect of people
psychology can have the desired target behaviour. In this approach, operant conditioning, the
locus of control and social norms theory is followed to increase an individual self-control and
self-esteem. As because of poor behaviour of individuals, smoking, and consuming alcohol
leads to various diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and heart diseases, which accounts for 50%
of deaths worldwide (Varunki, Katajavuori and Postareff, 2017).
Health education tends to indicate a biased behaviour towards single-construct and multi-
construct approaches. The behaviour change interventions include physical activity, accident
prevention, adequate nutrition, and successfully adapt to change. An individual has gone
through with all of the aspects of change theory with regards to stay away from smoking,
maintain a social life, and boost mental health. It is believed that if the person is healthy, can
manage change in an effective way and growth can be achieved (Zohar and Polachek, 2014).
As programmes and activities related to change should be considered to make awareness
regarding healthy behaviour. They should encourage social care, health, and well-being of
staff and influence people to change behaviour that may damage their safety. The theories
suggest that behaviour change can be predicted from its causes and shaped by norms and
attitudes (McFadden, Stock and Gowen III, 2015).
Impact of Safety culture and climate on both individual and organizational change
The safety culture of an organization nurtures person values, beliefs, and behaviour
associated with the safety issues. It has been seen that every company has a culture at the
corporate level and is intended to produce similar cultures, which is managed by the
corporation. It describes the shared values among an organization related to the ability to
incorporate at every level to influence behaviour and resistance to change (Schneider et al.,
2017).
As organizational safety climate refers to cultural factors of occupational safety such as
safety behaviour and attitudes as well as safety dynamics in an organization. It improves
safety training, which enhances knowledge and motivation. It increases job satisfaction of the
employees, which involves motivation to do the work and opportunities for the future (Eakin,
Lemos and Nelson, 2014).

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Recommendation
 They should develop a local behaviour change policy and strategy.
 This legislation increase awareness about the employees’ rights of safety and health in
the industry.
 They should maintain the transition effectively and efficiently and optimize future
adaptability, which is a creative way to dealing with individual and organizational
change.
 They should develop sustainable, practical, and adaptable behaviour change
programmes and interventions.
 They should positively manage the change management as this can influence an
organizational change management approach and individual change management
model (Brulle, 2014).
Conclusion
The management should always be ready to adapt and deal with the resistance of change as it
is expected that when a new project is undertaken, new technology is upgraded employees
will always be very positive to embrace change. Additionally, companies should utilize
effective communication and innovation methods to reduce distortion and avoidance. They
should take care of every employee health and well-being to maintain a healthy and safe
environment or culture in the organization.
Various approaches are used in organizational change as Lewin’s model, McKinsey’s
Framework, and Kotter’s theory. Behaviour theory influences individual change in the
organization. Corrective actions and activities are taken to embrace resistance to change in
every department of the organization. It can be understood that without positive attitudes
management will not be able to motivate employees and adapt to the change, which can bring
success to the organization.
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