Psychology plays a key role in the field of occupational health and safety. Understanding the psychological aspects of employee behavior in the workplace is essential to effectively managing occupational risks and promoting safe practices.

Psychology helps to understand what motivates employees to comply with occupational health and safety regulations and rules. This may include issues such as risk awareness, sense of obligation, rewards or punishment for compliance or non-compliance.

Understanding Risk and Assessing Threats: Psychology helps workers understand and assess occupational risks. This may include the ability to recognize potential threats and take appropriate preventive actions.

Safety culture: psychological aspects shape the organizational culture related to safety. Employees who feel responsible for their own and other colleagues’ safety contribute to building a culture and safety awareness.

Stress and mental health issues can impact employees’ ability to focus and stay alert. Psychology can effectively help identify and manage these issues in an occupational health and safety context. Communication and training: Understanding how employees process information and how they learn is key to designing effective health and safety training and communication programs.

Stress management in emergency situations: in the event of a breakdown or crisis, the psychological resilience of employees and their ability to remain calm and take appropriate actions under time pressure are extremely important from the point of view of the safety of the employees themselves and the entire organization. Motivating incident reporting: Psychology helps understand why employees may be afraid to report incidents or health and safety violations and how to encourage them to communicate openly about it.

Psychology can help analyze the psychological factors that influence workplace accidents, allowing for appropriate preventive measures to be introduced. Conflict management: Conflicts between employees or teams can impact job security. Psychology can help resolve conflicts and promote cooperation among employees. Understanding the concepts of barriers and obstacles: Psychology helps employees identify the barriers and obstacles that make it difficult for them to comply with health and safety regulations and develop strategies to overcome them.

The bottom line is that psychology plays a key role in all aspects of health and safety, from motivating employees to comply with regulations to managing stress in crisis situations. Knowledge about the psychological aspects of behavior at work is necessary to effectively ensure occupational health and safety for both employees and the entire organization.

Source:https://www.i-bhp.com/post/psychologia-w-bhp

Supported by Norway through Norway Grants 2014-2021, in the frame of the Programme “Social Dialogue – Decent Work”.