3 credits
Spring 2026 Lecture Upper Division
The Occupational Health and Safety Manager assumes a critical role within an organization - protecting the employees from suffering work-related injuries, illnesses, and fatalities. This job requires a number of approaches to achieve this aim, including employee training, hazard identification and abatement, safety policy development, and incident investigation. The health and safety manager often forms a bridge between upper management and frontline employees. As such, the successful health and safety manager needs skill sets which transfer across organizational levels. This course will explore strategies managing an effective health and safety program within an organization. Management strategies will be viewed from multiple perspectives. In relation to the frontline employee, topics will be explored to help engage employees in safe behaviors and dealing with situations in which failures occur, resulting in accidents. The upper management perspective will focus on the establishment of a safety management system and effective techniques for measuring and reporting safety performance. A final perspective will consider both the frontline employee and upper management. This perspective will explore strategies to establish a positive safety culture within an organization to bring the front line employees and upper management together in their vision of a safe and healthy workplace.
Learning Outcomes1Discuss strategies for creating a positive safety culture in an organization.
2Conduct an accident investigation and root cause analysis.
3Identify leading and lagging safety performance indicators.
4Explain methods of conducting safety training in an organization.
5Plan an effective safety management system for an organization.
6Demonstrate group and team building strategies as it relates to health and safety.
Prerequisites
made by Purdue students.