Providing a management tool for the performance assessment of occupational health and safety management system in the face of an emerging infectious disease

BackgroundIt is not clear how efficacious occupational health and safety management systems (OHS-MS) are in preventing the spread of infectious diseases in workplaces, exemplified by the outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020.ObjectiveOur specific aim is to provide a management tool to investigate how OHS-MS managed the consequences of COVID-19 pandemic in workplaces.MethodsWe first defined an OHS-performance model (OHS-PM) based on key performance indicators (KPIs). The 20 weighted KPIs (were in the seven functional elements of OHS-MS and were prioritized using the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP). A field study of a designed performance tool assessed the performance of the OHS-MS units of selected organizations in Tehran city of Iran during 2020-2021.ResultsThe KPIs of the "policy", "management commitment", and "planning" with the weights of 0.379, 0.199, and 0.110 ranked as the highest priorities. According to the field study, the performance of studied organizations was most influenced by KPIs of "preventive actions", "management commitment", and "planning".ConclusionWe showed how a management system in which the performance indicators are not dynamic may cause a gap between the policies (and adopted plans) with executive actions in practice The use of a valid management tool for purposeful monitoring and monitoring of the dynamic level of the performance indicators of the OHS-MS can be both effective and necessary at workplaces to manage unexpected disruptions, such as epidemics.