In safe hands

Disasters never knock and come, but how well prepared is your organisation, when something untoward happens? What are the safety measures that a company takes to ensure its employees are in safe hands? Suja Nair finds out

There are many issues that the HR has to deal with, especially in an industry like pharma and biotech. Providing safe working conditions to employees is always amongst the top priority for any organisation. The nature of this industry demands extra precaution with regards to safety for the employees, especially for those who work in labs, R&D centres, manufacturing unit, employees handling hazardous material, etc. In short, one of the crucial responsibilities for the HR is to deal with the safety of their employees.

Pradeep V Joshi, VP, Technical, Anglo-French Drugs and Industries, states, "The common HR issues that we normally have to deal with in terms of employee safety are with regards to good house keeping as it is very essential for efficient operations, improved morale, better productivity and reduction of accidents, etc. But most importantly there is a need to provide the employees with protective equipment to avoid accidents, thus ensuring inhalation, ear, eyes protection, etc."

Speaking on the importance of safety, Ravi Dasgupta, Group Head-HR, Biocon, says, "We have a Environment, Health and Safety Department (EHS) which sets out the policy and commitments that gives power and action to the organisation's belief. The EHS department takes care of the arrangements and procedures for environmental, health and safety control. They also alert management on possible risks so that appropriate and timely action may be taken to eliminate safety hazards." He elaborates that in order to provide structure and coordination for the environment health and safety manual, policy and actions; they have adopted the international standard for Environmental Management Systems, ISO 14001:2004 and OHSAS 18001:1999 as the basis of their management system.

In Pfizer, they have adopted a Security Standard Operational Procedure (SOP) for ensuring security measures including fire fighting and first aid, access control, CCTV and security rounds. Uday Mohan, Director HR Operations, Pfizer India, adds, "We also provide our employees with Mediclaim that allows hospitalisation benefits along with personal accident insurance that covers death due to accident, group insurance that covers benefits available to the nominated beneficiaries in case of death of a colleague."

Safety policies

"We also conduct schedule monitoring and analysis to find out the exposure levels from different chemicals, voice levels and other work place activities regularly" - Dr K I Varaprasad Reddy Managing Director Shantha Biotechnics

"We need an exhaustive set of environment, health and safety policies and regulations crafted for the pharma industry along with more institutes to offer courses on the same as per the global standards" - Ravi Dasgupta Group Head, HR Biocon

Employees have to be provided with protective gears like helmets, goggles, respirators gloves, safety shoes, protective garments, and the likes. These are not only essential for maintaining hygiene within the labs or manufacturing unit, but also for ensuring safety for the employees from any possible accidents or side effects. As far as safety measures are concerned there are no policies exclusively for the pharma industry, they have to follow the rules as per the Factories Act.

In Anglo-French, they have set their own policy, Safety Health and Environment (SHE), according to which their workplace has been engineered. This policy helps in increasing the shop floor safety standards, brings down occupational diseases and the work environment becomes friendly. They also have installed smoke detectors, alarm, emergency exit, emergency lighting, and assembly point. Joshi asserts, "We are equipped with fire hydrant systems in the plant, and also provide safety devices to our employees, like eye wash, etc, in quality control (QC) and R&D. We conduct mandatory onsite emergency plan and mock drill providing training to all people with respect to fire safety, general safety, handling of chemicals, materials, gas cylinders, storage and electrical safety."

Training to stay safe

Setting up of policies does not suffice in itself; identifying the key areas that need to be handled with caution and ensuring that employees are aware and adept at handling the situation as and when it arises, holds the key. It becomes part of the company's safety plan to see to it that their employees are pre and periodically examined, so that they can always keep a tab on their employees' health metres. They must ensure that employees make use of all the personal protective equipment provided to them.

Eplaining their safety plans, Manoj Kumar Mittal, Senior General Manager, Corporate, EHS, IPCA, says, "We have our own safety training programmes that include activities that provide a solution for both legal requirements and the safety objectives. They cover safety training topics and offer tools which can be used to develop competence for various levels of employees." He elaborates that employees in manufacturing area especially API manufacturing are at more risk, thus to avoid forsaken events they have adopted an effective knowledge, plant, equipment and process design and regular training and enforcement programme to reduce the risks of accidents considerably.

Campaigning for the awareness

In Biocon, policy cards containing the EHS policy are distributed to all the employees to create awareness. This policy is reviewed at least twice in a year in the management review to ensure that it remains appropriate to the environmental impacts, hazards and risks associated with the activities, products and services. They also conduct a thorough Aspect-Impact (AIM), Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment (HIRA) identification periodically and internal audits to check the conformity to the EHS Policy.

Along with these steps, regular health check up for all the employees are also carried out annually where individual health index is maintained, and health check up reports are generated and analysed. Safety gear and first aid boxes are made available to all the departments. Also all the employees in the company are covered under the organisation's health insurance policy. An occupational health centre is established with an in-house medical practitioner who handles the medical issues of the employees and advises employees suffering from major ailments. The practitioner prepares a medical report periodically and the issues are discussed with the EHS and HR department. EHS and HR department on case-to-case basis takes.

Dasgupta avers, "We carry out health surveillance whenever an employee is working in a high risk area, or when an employee has been exposed to any of the hazardous substances. The health surveillance is performed under the supervision of a qualified medical practitioner who is adequately trained in the tests or procedures necessary. If the medical practitioner discovers that there is likelihood that disease or health effect could occur because of the conditions at the workplace or because of the exposure to a hazardous substance then required control actions are taken by the company to solve the problem." On the same lines, Dr K I Varaprasad Reddy, Managing Director, Shantha Biotechnics, says, "We believe in the wellbeing of our employees, thus, keeping the same in mind we conduct safety internal audits on regular basis to find out unsafe conditions and unsafe acts."

Cross-training sessions

In any organisation there are different levels of work and each area has a different modus operandi. Having a knowledge-sharing session can actually lead to exchanging ideas and sharing of suggestions which further helps in understanding and developing a bond within the company. Dasgupta opines that all the employees at Biocon are made aware of the relevance and importance of their activities as per their line of work and how they can contribute to the achievement of EHS objectives and policy. This is done by way of imparting awareness training to all personnel. To ensure and to cover specific training in the relevant department, the training needs are mapped accordingly in consultation with the department heads.

Government initiatives

In spite of the increasing demand for pharma and biotech industry, very few steps are taken by the government with regards to the safety issues. The government bodies should conduct safety programmes regularly for better safety awareness across the country. Dasgupta feels, "Lot of effort should be made from the government's side to accelerate the growth of biotechnology industry in India. There is need for closer involvement between the corporate and government bodies. Currently, we need an exhaustive set of environment, health and safety policies and regulations crafted for the pharma industry along with more institutes to offer courses on the same as per the global standards. We also need more laws focusing on preventive measures rather than reactive measures." The government initiatives and the industry efforts have to be in sync with each other. The government should also organise seminars with respect to safety in different industries. Thus, the general opinion of the industry is that government should also act as an adviser and educator rather than only an auditor.

suja.nair@expressindia.com