Managing health and safety:health survey-4

Step 4: Measure your performanceJust like finance, production or sales, you need to measure your health and safety performance to find out if you are being successful. You need to know: ■where you are; ■where you want to be; ■what is the difference and why. Active monitoring, before things go wrong, involves regular inspection and checking to ensure that your standards are being implemented and management controls are working. Reactive monitoring, after things go wrong, involves learning from your mistakes, whether they have resulted in injuries and illness, property damage or near misses. Two key components of monitoring systems ■Active monitoring (before things go wrong). Are you achieving the objectives and standards you set yourself and are they effective? ■Reactive monitoring (after...

Read more »

Posted in: about mental health,health,health and safety,health at work,health survey,Managing health and safety,safety management,safety workplace,th

Managing health and safety:health survey-3

Step 3: Plan and set standards    Planning is the key to ensuring that your health and safety efforts really work. Planning for health and safety involves setting objectives, identifying hazards, assessing risks, implementing standards of performance and developing a positive culture. It is often useful to record your plans in writing. Your planning should provide for: ■identifying hazards and assessing risks, and deciding how they can be eliminated or controlled; ■complying with the health and safety laws that apply to your business; ■agreeing health and safety targets with managers and supervisors; ■a purchasing and supply policy which takes health and safety into account; ■design of tasks, processes, equipment, products and services, safe systems of work; ■procedures to...

Read more »

Posted in: health,health and safety,health survey,Managing health and safety,mental health illness,safety management,safety workplace

Managing health and safety:health survey-2

Step 1 :Set your policy             The events that cause injuries and illness can also lead to property damage and interrupt production so you must aim to control all accidental loss.Identifying hazards and assessing risks,* deciding what precautions are needed, putting them in place and checking they are used, protects people, develops quality, and safeguards plant and production. Your health and safety policy should influence all your activities, including the selection of people, equipment and materials, the way work is done and how you design and provide goods and services. A written statement of your policy and the organization and arrangements for implementing and monitoring it shows your staff, and anyone else, that...

Read more »

Posted in: health,health and safety,health survey,Managing health and safety,mental health illness,safety management,safety workplace

Managing health and safety:health survey-1

Five steps to successThis booklet summarises the key messages of Successful health and safety management  which retains the well received framework for managing health and safety set out in earlier editions, as well as providing improved guidance on:planning for health and safety; accident and incident investigation; health and safety auditing. This booklet also explains what is involved in good management of health and safety and the cost of getting it wrong. It is aimed at directors and managers and should also help supervisors, owners of small firms, employee representatives, insurance companies, trade associations and other key players. Many of the messages will be of interest to small and medium sized firms, who will find further...

Read more »

Posted in: health,health and safety,health at work,Managing health and safety,safety management,safety workplace,the health and safety at work

Attitudes to Mental Illness - 2011 survey report:part 3

Causes of mental illness and the need for special servicesIntroductionThis section reports on statements about the causes of mental illness and the need for special services. The statements reported here are:  ‘There are sufficient existing services for people with mental illness’  ‘One of the main causes of mental illness is a lack of self-discipline and will-power’  ‘There is something about people with mental illness that makes it easy to tell them from normal people’. Analysis is based on the level of agreement with these statements, which have been included in all surveys since 1994. Trends over timeFigure 10 shows levels of agreement with these statements since 1994. Since 1994, the percentage agreeing that there are...

Read more »

Posted in: about mental health,Attitudes to Mental Illness,Causes of mental illness,health,health survey,mental health conditions,mental health illness,special services for mental illness

Attitudes to Mental Illness - 2011 survey report:part 2

Understanding and tolerance of mental illnessIntroductionThis section explores understanding and tolerance of mental illness. These statements have all been included in each survey since 1994.Analysis in this section focuses on the understanding/tolerance dimension of each statement.For some statements this is the percentage agreeing, for others it is the percentage disagreeing. This is indicated for each statement in the list below.The statements included are: ‘We have a responsibility to provide the best possible care for people with mental illness’ (% agreeing)  ‘Virtually anyone can become mentally ill’ (% agreeing)  ‘Increased spending on mental health services is a waste of money’ (% disagreeing)  ‘People with mental...

Read more »

Posted in: about mental health,Attitudes to Mental Illness,health,health survey,mental health conditions,mental health illness

Attitudes to Mental Illness - 2011 survey report

Attitudes to mental illnessGrouping the statementsThe 27 attitude statements are grouped into four categories for analysis purposes:1. Fear and exclusion of people with mental illness2. Understanding and tolerance of mental illness3. Integrating people with mental illness into the community4. Causes of mental illness and the need for special services.Fear and exclusion of people with mental illnessIntroductionThis section explores fear and exclusion of people with mental illness. These statements have all been included in each wave of the survey since 1994. The statements covered in this section are:• ‘Locating mental health facilities in a residential area downgrades the neighbourhood’• ‘It is frightening to think of people with mental problems...

Read more »

Posted in: about mental health,Attitudes to Mental Illness,health,health survey,mental health conditions,mental health illness,mentalhealth

Survey Form(sample): Health Survey

Instructions for completing the questionnaire:Please answer every question. Some questions may look like others, but each one is different.Please take the time to read and answer each question carefully by filling in the bubble that best representsyour response.Patient Name: _____________________________________________________________SSN#:________________________________________Date:________________________________Person helping to complete this form: ___________________________________________________1. In general, would you say your health is: Excellent  Very good  Good  Fair  Poor 2. Compared to one year ago, how would you rate your health in general now? Much better now than a year ago  Somewhat better now than a year ago  About the...

Read more »

Posted in: health,health survey,health survey questionnaire,questionnaire for health survey,sf health,sf-36,sf-36 questionnaire,sf36

Global Competitiveness:part 6

Eleventh pillar: Business sophistication                   Business sophistication is conducive to higher efficiencyin the production of goods and services.This leads, in turn, to increased productivity, thus enhancing a nation’scompetitiveness.Business sophistication concerns thequality of a country’s overall business networks as well asthe quality of individual firms’ operations and strategies.This is particularly important for countries at anadvanced stage of development,when the more basic sources of productivity improvements have been exhaustedto a large extent.The quality of a country’s businessnetworks and supporting industries, as measured by thequantity and quality of local suppliers and the extent oftheir interaction, is...

Read more »

Posted in: business,global competitive advantage,global competitiveness report,global market competition,pillars of global competitiveness,the global competitiveness,what is global competitiveness

Global Competitiveness:part 5

Eighth pillar: Financial market development                  The recent financial crisis has highlighted the centralrole of a sound and well-functioning financial sector foreconomic activities. An efficient financial sector allocatesthe resources saved by a nation’s citizens, as well as thoseentering the economy from abroad, to their most productiveuses. It channels resources to those entrepreneurialor investment projects with the highest expected ratesof return rather than to the politically connected. A thorough and proper assessment of risk is therefore akey ingredient. Business investment is critical to productivity.Therefore economies require sophisticated financialmarkets that can make capital available for private-sectorinvestment...

Read more »

Posted in: business,competitive report,global competitive advantage,global market competition,pillars of global competitiveness,the global competitiveness,what is global competitiveness

Global Competitiveness:part 4

Fifth pillar: Higher education and training         Quality higher education and training is crucial foreconomies that want to move up the value chainbeyond simple production processes and products.In particular, today’s globalizing economy requires countriesto nurture pools of well-educated workers who are ableto adapt rapidly to their changing environment and theevolving needs of the production system. This pillar measures secondary and tertiary enrollment rates as wellas the quality of education as evaluated by the businesscommunity. The extent of staff training is also taken intoconsideration because of the importance of vocationaland continuous on-the-job training—which is neglectedin many economies—for ensuring a constant upgradingof workers’...

Read more »

Posted in: business,competitive report,global competitiveness report,global market competition,pillars of global competitiveness,what is global competitiveness

Global Competitiveness:part 3

Third pillar: Macroeconomic environment The stability of the macroeconomic environment isimportant for business and, therefore, is important forthe overall competitiveness of a country.Although it is certainly true that macroeconomic stability alonecannot increase the productivity of a nation, it is alsorecognized that macroeconomic disarray harms theeconomy.The government cannot provide servicesefficiently if it has to make high-interest payments onits past debts. Running fiscal deficits limits the government’sfuture ability to react to business cycles.Firms cannot operate efficiently when inflation rates are out ofhand. In sum, the economy cannot grow in a sustainablemanner unless the macroeconomic environment is stable.This issue has captured the attention of the...

Read more »

Posted in: business,global competitive advantage,global competitiveness report,global market competition,the global competitiveness,what is global competitiveness

Global Competitiveness:part 2

communities to core economic activities and services. Effective modes of transport, including quality roads, railroads, ports, and air transport, enable entrepreneurs to get their goods and services to market in a secure and timely manner and facilitate the movement of workers to the most suitable jobs. Economies also depend on electricity supplies that are free of interruptions and shortages so that businesses and factories can work unimpeded. Finally, a solid and extensive telecommunications network allows for a rapid and free flow of information, which increases overall economic efficiency by helping to ensure that businesses can communicate and decisions are made by economic actors taking into account all available relevant information. This is an area where the crisis may prove...

Read more »

Posted in: business,competitive report,global competitiveness report,global market competition,the global competitiveness,what is global competitiveness

Global Competitiveness

The 12 pillars of competitivenessThere are many determinants driving productivity andcompetitiveness. Understanding the factors behind thisprocess has occupied the minds of economists for hundredsof years, ranging from Adam Smith’s focus onspecialization and the division of labor to neoclassicaleconomists’ emphasis on investment in physical capitaland infrastructure,3 and, more recently, to interest inother mechanisms such as education and training, technologicalprogress, macroeconomic stability, good governance,firm sophistication, and market efficiency, amongothers. While all of these ideas are likely to be important,they are not mutually exclusive—two or more ofthem can be true at the same time,This open-endedness is captured within the GCIby including a weighted average of many...

Read more »

Posted in: business,competitive report,global competitiveness report,global market competition,the global competitiveness,what is global competitiveness