Abstract
Variability In Health And Safety Standards
Standards of health and safety around the world vary greatly. The standards vary not only across different industries, such as exploration, drilling, production, shipping or construction, but also by geographic region, as is clearly evident from statistics published by industry bodies such as OGP. The standards of health and safety can even vary across different aspects of businesses of an international company dealing with industry in various regions of the world. Putting the above together creates a challenging issue to manage.
Cultural issues and general standards of living play a large role in setting the scene for the health and safety standards that are present in the industry and country in question. Many issues form the basis of this cultural heritage, but this paper proposes that one can simply correlate the health and safety awareness of a workforce or organisation with the cost of that labour force. In other words, "you get what you pay for".
Although legislation can play a key role in this, one has to differentiate legislation with enforced legislation. Again, cultural issues play a leading role here and again the end result is reflected in the cost of labour.
