Environmental/Occupational Paper 2

Running head: HEALTH AND SAFETY 1

6

HEALTH AND SAFETY

Health and Safety

Carla Bigio

Mod 1 – SLP

EOH502 (2020JUL27FT-1)

Dr. Jewel Carter- McCummings

Trident at AIU

August 4, 2020

Health and Safety of ExxonMobil

ExxonMobil has existed for over a century and is the largest oil and gas firm in the world. The company commits itself to safeguard its employees' security and customers. Environmental and occupational health issues affect the health and well-being of all people. The company attains operational better performance by going past the applicable environment-related laws. Thus, it focuses on high safety measures in its activities, always maintaining the emphasis on people and protecting the ecosystem. As s significant energy supplier, it seeks to increase its contributions to the growth of the economy, environmental preservation, and extended social welfare.

ExxonMobil Occupational Setting

The company engages all stakeholders such as communities, in approaches that respect their customs and cultures; the engagement aims at understanding the perspective of all team players who contribute to designing and ongoing operations. Also, the company's approaches are in line with the principles of the International Labor Organization Convention 169 on traditional and tribal individuals in independent nations (Madariaga, 2020). Further, the management follows the International Finance Corporation Performance Standards on Environmental and Social Sustainability to promote conservation of the ecosystem and health safety for everyone.

The Number of Employees

ExxonMobil is an American multinational oil and gas corporation; it has the largest number of employees. Its continuous merging has increased the number of employees who work at its different oil and gas refineries. Currently, it has 74,900, workers assigned to work at its 37 oil refineries in 21 nations (ExxonMobil, 2019). However, the number of its workers continues to increase due to globalization and growth. For instance, the number of workers declined with a significant margin from 2000 to 2017, whereby in 2017, the company had 69,600, a number less by 1500 compared to 2016 (ExxonMobil, 2019). In the last 18 years, the number of permanent workers working for ExxonMobil has decreased by 30,000. In 2000, the number stood at 99600, which is more than the current 74,900.

The Workers' Demographics (Age, Gender, Ethnicity)

Ethnicity, race, age, and experience define the nature of the company's workforce diversity, reflecting or giving a picture of workforce demographics. ExxonMobil carries out its business activities in almost all parts of the world. Its employees are, therefore, from different countries of different ages and ethnicity. In various regions where does its business, it has successfully managed to perform beyond its traditional frames of reference. The company's global workforce portrays the local communities and cultures in which the company operates. The company leadership comprises of people of different races. For instance, Sara N. Ortwein, Drilling Engineer, is a white above 50 years old (ExxonMobil, 2019). Elijah White, the company's Vice President, Geoscience, is a black who started to work for the firm in 1980. The corporation recruits and hires from the region it operates to balance its workforce ethnicity, geographic, and race issues.

Manufacturing Processes

The company uses new technology that plays an essential role in meeting global energy demand. These technologies allow the company to discover new resources, access to harsh or remote locations and extract crude oil from the ground. Under the manufacturing process, three significant components are upstream, midstream, and downstream activities (McKee, Adenuga, & Carrillo, 2017). The first component is where the company explores for crude oil deposits and starts drilling after discovery. ExxonMobil distributes the crude oil to its refineries within the midstream activities, whereas downstream activities involve the retail sale of petroleum products to various gasoline stations.

Health and Safety Officer and the Roles/Responsibilities

Health and safety officers take advanced measures to address occupational safety and health issues within the facility. Through this officer, the facility gets fully armed with technological knowledge and skills to enhance overall safety operations. The primary role of such an officer is giving workers the right and accurate information and up-to-date knowledge of occupational safety and health laws, rules, skills, and equipment required to protect themselves when at the workplace (Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, 2019b). Personal protective equipment becomes important since the working environment has multiple health hazards, such as dust, injuries, and falling heavy objects in the extraction site.

Furthermore, health and safety officers play a role in establishing effective mechanisms for recording and giving notification of occupational accidents and diseases within the facility. When implementing the occupational safety and health requirements to have a safe working environment, health and safety officers take various steps to create awareness of a safe working environment through multiple means (Levy, Wegman, Baron, & Sokas, 2011). Some of these steps are identifying hotspots for incidents and accidents within the workplace, placing safety symbols at strategic positions, and inspecting workers to comply with health and safety measures in place.

Summarily, the roles and responsibilities are monitoring incidents of illness and injury, writing reports with details on the current situation of safety, formulating and developing health and safety strategies for minimizing injuries, and investigating environmental incidents and other facility safety concerns. Designing and creating health and safety programs to promote safety awareness education is one of the significant roles within the company. Most incidents of injury occur at oil and gas extraction sites where the use of machines and other heavy objects is inevitable. In the site, respiratory complications are dominant; thus, a health and safety manager takes major steps to ensure workers work in a safe environment by providing personal protective equipment that protects them from dust and other causes of respiratory diseases.

Conclusively, ExxonMobil has protected the social welfare, specifically the health of community and workers from oil and gas extraction hazards. Being a multinational business, it has a diverse workforce of employees of various races, ethnicities, genders, and ages. The organization has developed a proper production cycle for three main components, ranging from oil and gas extraction to refining to sale as final finished products. Lastly, the health and safety officer plays a critical role in ensuring workers' safe working environment and maintaining a safe environment for communities near the company's extraction sites.

References

ExxonMobil, (2019). Global Diversity. Creating competitive advantage through people. https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/-/media/Global/Files/careers/global-diversity-booklet.pdf

Levy, B. S., Wegman, D. H., Baron, S. L., & Sokas, R. K. (Eds.) (2011). Section I.1: Occupational and environmental health: Twenty-first century challenges and opportunities. In Occupational and environmental health: Recognizing and preventing disease and injury (6th ed., pp. 3-20). New York: Oxford University Press.

Madariaga Cuneo, I. M. (2020). ILO Convention 169 in the inter-American human rights system: consultation and consent. The International Journal of Human Rights, 24(2-3), 257-264.

McKee, R. H., Adenuga, M. D., & Carrillo, J. C. (2017). The reciprocal calculation procedure for setting occupational exposure limits for hydrocarbon solvents: An update. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene, 14(8), 573-582.

Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion (2019b). Occupational safety and health. Healthy People 2020. Accessed at https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics

Occupational Safety and Health Act, Pub. L. No. 91-596, 84 Stat. S2193, (1970). Retrieved from https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/oshact/completeoshact