Is Societal attitude related to health and safety? What are the societal factors influencing health and safety priorities?

Yes, Health and Safety influenced by societal factors and these societal factors have deep influence on Health and safety.  Many factors by which health and safety itself affected are economy, innovations, developments in health and safety, technology developments, global connections .i.e. globalization, demography change, migrant workers etc.

Economy effects on health and safety can be seen when organization facing money issues try to cut off health and safety funds whereas if organization is concern about health and safety then probably organization has sufficient money in pocket. So economy is directly impacting health and safety culture. Gulf countries facing financial crisis reducing H&S personnel against standard requirement.

Innovation, development in technology leads to increased awareness and now we can demarcate what is harmful and what is beneficial. Like in the field of Chemical safety, with the advancement in animal testing we are able to understand harmful effects of different chemical. So during day to day routine and at workplace we try to avoid use of such harmful chemicals. For example .i.e Ban on Asbestos in many countries.

Globalisation is also directly impacts health and safety. Abolishment of trade barriers, cheap labour, cheap material, cheap technology, cheap travelling cost, better communication among countries lead to compliance of health and safety requirement of better standards.  For example if any Asian company is going to do trade in Europe then certainly this company has to follow European Union health and safety norms. Which is ultimately bringing change in the Health and safety management style of the organization.

Demography change is also one of the cause of societal factors. More women means more stringent laws for health and safety keeping focus on women. Pregnancy issue, Welfare issues, working time etc need to be taken care by any organization if they are going to employ women. So this factor is also key in changing health and safety attitude.

Migrant workers lead to both either positive or negative health and safety culture. If migrants are from high health and safety index country then certainly they are going to bring positive health and safety culture. But if they are from low health and safety index country then managing their health and safety is key challenge for organization as well as for society.