Evolving towards the culture of prevention
COVID -19 came to change the reality of the world as we currently know it and therefore the way companies operate. It is difficult to think that after this crisis that organizations will return to where they were before, to operate as before, in a way in which prevention is usually seen as an expense and not an investment.
Actions aimed at preventing the health of workers are key to being able to face the new challenges that this century has in store for us, but they are also necessary to comply with the legal mandate of guaranteeing an adequate level of protection for the health and safety of workers. workers, required by the General Law on Prevention of Occupational Risks.
These preventive actions are becoming increasingly important in an overpopulated world in the process of climate change, where it is warned that events will frequently occur that test our emergency response systems and our ability to adapt. From now on, COVID-19 provides important lessons to organizations, one of them is that there were no protocols or emergency plans to deal with situations like this, so it is important to learn from the crisis and evolve. From now on, organizations, regardless of their size, have valuable experience that gives them the opportunity to develop a culture of prevention that allows them to survive over time and develop the necessary mechanisms to face a pandemic of this nature or any other. another future situation.
In accordance with the Principle of Prevention and the purposes of the aforementioned General Law on the Prevention of Occupational Risks, prior to the reincorporation of the activities of each organization, they must carry out a detailed analysis of all the risks to which the collaborators will be exposed. Due to the difficulty of foreseeing all the risks involved, it is recommended that the resumption of activities be done in an orderly and staggered manner, guaranteeing the safety and health of the workers, with especially sensitive groups being the last to rejoin, when the virus is fully controlled. This approach of taking preventive actions before resuming any economic activity is being taken as a mandatory measure by other countries in the region.
In the case of El Salvador, the result of the detailed risk analysis must be incorporated into the Occupational Risk Prevention Management Program (PGPRO), which is already established in article 8 of the General Law on Risk Prevention in the Workplaces, whose creation and implementation corresponds to the employer. Thus, the program described must be updated to include the risks of a pandemic that, until today, very few companies had foreseen as a real risk for their organization.
For this reason, even when there is no specific guide or guidelines issued by the Government, the prevention actions to be taken have been established in the principles and the very object of the General Law on Risk Prevention, and therefore they must be incorporated. and be implemented within companies, updating the PGPRO.
Failure to comply with the duty to guarantee an adequate level of protection of the health and safety of workers can be considered a very serious infraction established in article 80 of the Law in reference, for not adopting the applicable preventive measures in matters of Safety and Health. Occupational, when said omission results in a serious and imminent risk to the health of the workers, whose fine will be established between twenty-two to twenty-eight monthly minimum wages, depending on the capacity of the offender, in addition to the sanctions that may be imposed as soon as the regulations are issued. specific guidelines for each activity.
With this we conclude that for the return to the operation of each organization, it is essential that each one evaluates its risks, according to its size and activity, establishing clear, simple measures that expose the commitment of the organization and the workers to avoid risk of contagion from this or another type of future virus, always under an adaptive approach that allows the organization to evolve and survive in a new culture where prevention and resilience are key.