Introduction

The following essay is on the role of risk perception in the context of risk regulations
and management. The discussion examines the contribution of risk regulatory bodies
in control and management of risks. It also examines the role of risk management in
creating awareness about potential risks. Occupational health and safety is important
due to the emerging risks in the workplace.
The work environment has changed due to the reduced compensation regimes on
injuries especially during the global economic recession. In addition, different work
arrangements adopted by organisations have led to emergence of new hazards with
the most common being psychological hazards due to fatigue, overwork and low
compensation. The government, insurance agencies as well as regulatory bodies are
also concerned with increased cases of industrial explosions, injuries and deaths in
the workplace (Reason 2008).
Risk perception
To understand the risk perception, it is important to describe risk awareness. This is
the extent to which individuals acknowledge their awareness of risks around them by
examining how well they respond to warnings and information that alerts them about
possible risk situations (Waring 1996). Risk management refers to the measures
adopted to prevent occurrence of accidents in environments or situations that may
be unsafe to the development of the possible risk situations (Kriebel & Moure 1998).
Risk management involves risk assessment procedures to determine the possible
risks that are likely to occur in any given scenario. Risk management is useful in
environments such as hospitals, homes, offices, industries as well as recreational
places (Reason 2008). Once the possible hazards have been identified, it is easier to
design ways of responding to the occurrence as early as possible. Risk regulations

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refers to the agencies that are involved in the inspection of the industries, offices and
homes to ensures that they have complied with the regulatory policies that govern
risk management in different situations. Every industry has its own guidelines, which
determine risk management. The risk management is critical not only in the
prevention of hazards but also in preservation of human life and property (Turner
1978). Adhering to the set guidelines that determine risk management is imperative
in determining the most convenient way of dealing with the possible risk situations.
The other aspect that is of importance is the development of risk awareness (Kriebel
& Moure 1998).
Role of risk perception in the broad context of risk management and regulation
Risk awareness is critical in mitigation of the risky circumstances. What risk
perception does is to provide information to those involved in risky environments
about hazards likely to occur and ways of controlling them. Risk awareness provides
information about the development of the accidents and factors that may facilitate
occurrence of such hazards. Risk perception alerts people who work in risky
environments of the potential hazards that are likely to occur. A good example
is that of Hurricane Isaac in USA where workers were evacuated earlier as
soon as warning reports were issued concerning the hurricane. However, it is
not always possible that high level of risk regulation and risk management
procedures imply that people in those environments have risk perception (Reason
2008).
The other role played by risk awareness is the formulation of risk management
procedures that apply to each scenario where the hazard is likely to occur. The risk
managers acknowledge that risky environments are common and risk management
procedures should be specific to each scenario. If it is the hospital, the risk manager

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should develop risk management procedures that apply to the medical equipments,
medical waste and chemicals. In case of a mine, the procedures should relate to
mine situations where the risk manager should have specific procedures that relate
to mining (Reason 2008).
Risk perception has brought into perspective an aspect of occupational health and
safety that involves psychosocial factors. These have been some of the major
causes of injury in the workplace. The psychosocial factors in the workplace have
not received the attention required in the development of policies critical to the
prevention of health risks. The psychosocial hazards affect the mind, the health and
physiological well-being of workers resulting to low productivity. The psychosocial
factors include the low wages, bullying in the workplace and overwork (Einarsen &
Raknes 1996). In many instances, the psychosocial injuries are not compensated as
they are assumed to be of no effect by the workers. In addition, workers do not have
awareness of any regulatory inspectorate that assist workers who have claims of
psychosocial injuries (Einarsen & Raknes 1996). However, in many companies and
work environments, the human resource departments have mechanisms, which deal
with workers complaints of harassment and exploitation. Such issues are dealt with
internally and usually there is no compensation for psychosocial injuries (Kriebel &
Moure 1998). For instance in the case of Catherine Rosa in UK who sued her
employer for paying her extremely low wages which had led to her depression
and eventual mental breakdown(Kriebel & Moure 1998). The human resource
departments should also come up with specific job descriptions. They should match
the job specification to a person who is competent and meets all the qualifications.
This is because it results to overworked and strained individuals. Risk perception in
the area of psychosocial risks is imperative because of its effects on the society. It

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affects relationships due to increased family demands and responsibilities and may
lead to ill health (Einarsen & Raknes 1997).
Risk perception in the context of the broad regulations and risk management has
played a major role in the development of safety engineering. The industries have
risky tools and machines such as blades, gears and presses that might harm the
workers (Kriebel & Moure 1998). Therefore, to minimise such risks, safety
engineering assists in the formulation of low risk machines that have protective
materials to prevent the worker from coming into direct contact with them. Safety
engineering together with econometrics are applied science that proves the cost of
safety measures that the company or industry may have to apply to prevent injuries
emanating from failure to put in place the safety measures. A cost accounting
method specifically looks into the occupation health and safety of a particular
environment. Econometrics is the means of assessing the employees’ ability to work
with the available resources without exceeding psychological and physiological
capabilities (Kriebel & Moure 1998).
Risk perception also plays a critical role in creating awareness about the relationship
between work environment, risk factors and diseases or injury. Different studies have
tried to establish the causes of some patterns of occurrences of certain types of
injuries in particular type of jobs (Waring 1996). The most common type of injury in
the industries is the repetitive strain injury. This injury is as a result of
overworking a particular body muscle repetitively, which leads to pain and
eventual muscle injury. This type of injury is very common in most developing
countries especially in mining industries where ten percent of the workers fall
victim strain injury every year (Quinn 2009).

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Amidst the regulatory bodies and inspectorates that assess the workers welfare, the
repetitive strain injury has been on the rise. Some studies have argued that it is not
that the regulatory bodies and inspectorates that assess the safety of workers in the
work environments are negligent but it is because there are other factors that
contribute to this injury (Turner 1978). For instance, in the case of Upper big mine
in West Virginia USA in 2008, which claimed the lives of twenty-nine people.
This is because although the inspectorates had approved the mine’s risk
management policies dissatisfaction among mineworkers may have resulted
to negligence (Quinn 2009). The first one may be the psychosocial factors such as
low payment, which lead to overwork or working for long hours (Turner 1978). The
social factors involve the company or the group in which the person belongs. There
may be peer pressure to overwork or compete for something, which may make the
individual worker to overwork resulting to injury. The other factor may be the
company policies or organisational factors that may influence or exert
pressure on the individual to overwork and strain through direct supervision
and high workload that is not commensurate with the workers capability like in
the case of Ohio mines which had thirty strain injuries every year (Einarsen, &
Raknes 1997). When managing this type of risk it is imperative to consider all the
factors that lead to the injury as this makes it easy to contain such injuries.
The risk perception also creates awareness about the hazardous substances that
the workers might come across in the workplace. This awareness has contributed
significantly to reduction of occurrence of asthma diseases among workers
due to fugitive asthma related gases in the workplace. In the year 1992 where
are 500,000 of Asthma resulting from occupations, the figure has reduced to
about 50,000 by the year 2008. The hazardous substances are usually because of

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nanotechnology, which is the technology behind polymers that are commonplace in
the world today. The gases and substances released during the manufacture of such
materials are harmful to the body. Prolonged exposures to such materials lead to the
development of illnesses. Subsequent researches have shown that cancer result
from exposure to such material. Exposure to asbestos is a major cause of
cancerous diseases; two of three occupational cancers are because of
exposure to asbestos (Waring 1996). Workers in such environments must be
aware of the risks that such environments expose them to. Although the
inspectorates and risk regulation bodies have guidelines of safety measures to
adhere to during such operations, it is imperative for organisation to develop
compensation regimes (Kriebel & Moure 1998).
Conclusion
Risk perception plays an important role in preventing occurrence of hazards in the
work place as well as at home. Without risk perception, regulating and managing
risks would be a difficult task for everyone. Risk perception has created awareness
about risks and hazards that are likely to occur in work environments. Knowledge on
how to deal with risks and contain risky situations leads to limited number of injuries.
Considering the context of risk management and regulation, it is imperative to
increase the inspection of work environments and conduct assessments frequently
to ensure that every possible risk is considered and appropriate measures are in
place to contain it. It is also imperative to put in place measures to enforce those
regulations. Other than work or physical injury, it is also important to consider the
psychological injuries that may occur in particular environments. There is need to
create policies that show the magnitude of such injuries and how organisation should
compensate them.

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References

Einarsen, S & Raknes, B 1997, ‘Harassment in the workplace and the victimization
of men’, Journal of Violence and Victims, vol. 12, pp. 247-263.
Einarsen, S & Skogstad, A 1996, ‘Bullying at work: epidemiological findings in public
and private organizations’, European Journal of Work and Organizational
Psychology, vol. 2, pp.185-201.
Kriebel, D & Moure, R 1998, ‘Sustainable production: a proposed strategy for the
work environment’, American Journal of Medicine, vol.4, pp.297–304.
Quinn, M 2009, ‘Occupational health, public health, worker health’, American Journal
of Public Health, vol. 93, pp.526.
Reason, J 2008, The human contribution: unsafe acts, accidents and heroic
recoveries, Farnham Surrey, Cincinnati.
Turner, B 1978, Man made disasters, Oxford University Press, London.
Waring, A 1996, Safety management systems, Prentice Hall, Cincinnati.