Bringing It Together: Aligning HR’s Strengths with Health, Safety, and Well-being Matters

HR leaders oversee the functions that shape organisational success: Organisational Development (OD), Employment Relations (ER), Culture and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). These areas are central to creating thriving, engaged, and high-performing workplaces. But have you considered Health, Safety, and Well-being (HSW)?

If HSW is part of your portfolio, how have you approached it? Is it fully integrated with your core People strategy, or does it sit slightly apart? If HSW isn’t part of your remit, how often do you consider its intersections with your work? And how does it align with the organisation’s People goals?

Over the past 15 years, HSW thinking has evolved significantly. No longer just about keeping people safe from harm, compliance, and audits; HSW now addresses work and the experience of work. It’s about BetterWork —how work and operations intersect with customers, teams, and individuals in dynamic and complex ways. These changes reflect the shifting needs of modern workplaces and offer HR leaders a powerful opportunity to unlock potential by integrating or collaborating with HSW to enhance work and achieve operational excellence.

In fact, HSW aligns naturally with HR and supports the creation of inclusive environments where all workers feel valued and supported. Together, HSW and HR have the potential to strengthen workplace trust, engagement, and performance.

So how can this shift transform work experiences for the better, and why is it important for HR?

1. HSW: From Compliance to Opportunity

HSW is not just a compliance-driven function, it encompasses a holistic framework that addresses physical, mental, and social well-being. Moving beyond audits and injury reports—HSW focuses on enabling people to perform safely and effectively. This approach makes HSW meaningful, allowing risks to be managed in real time and positioning safety practices as a new asset to improving performance, engagement, innovation, and retention.

Questions to Reflect On

• Is your HSW strategy focused only on meeting compliance obligations or preventing harm, or does it address the broader needs of a modern workforce?
• How well does your organisation integrate HSW into its overall People strategy?
• Are there opportunities to use work design to better align HSW with HR initiatives?

Viewing HSW as an enabler rather than an obligation transforms it into a proactive driver of organisational success.

2. OD and HSW: Co- Build for Capability and Resilience

OD focuses on creating systems, leadership, and strategies that enable organisations to adapt and thrive. When aligned with HSW, OD ensures that organisational growth is rooted in practices that support well-being (physical and psychological) and organisational performance.

The Collaboration

• Leadership Development: Identifying the requirements for leading both the organisation and safety ensures a unified leadership programme that addresses operational safety and performance simultaneously. Ensuring understanding of the operational safety requirements meld together with performance provides greater clarity for leaders at all levels of the organisation.
• Change Management:  The Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 (HSWA) mandates robust and regular management of change processes. Applying an OD lens to this requirement helps organisations address both physical and psychosocial risks, reducing resistance and fostering participatory practices.
• Work and Work force Design:
• Insights from HSW can help OD design roles and work structures that meet both cognitive and physical demands. This approach strengthens organisational design while enhancing individual capability and organisational resilience to deliver safety and performance outcomes together.

Questions to Reflect On

• Are leadership development programmes integrating the organisation’s operational safety requirements alongside leadership goals to create clarity and consistency for leaders?
• Does your organisation’s change management framework incorporate HSWA requirements, addressing both physical and psychosocial risks effectively?
• Are work design/workforce strategies informed by operational insights and real-world employee experiences, ensuring roles align with both organisational needs and individual competencies?

3. ER and HSW: United by a Commitment to Worker Care

At their core, both Employment Relations (ER) and Health, Safety, and Well-being (HSW) are rooted in labour laws designed to protect and support workers. ER focuses on ensuring fairness, equity, and compliance with employment legislation, while HSW seeks to safeguard physical, mental, and social well-being in line with health and safety regulations. Together, they reflect an overarching commitment to worker care and the creation of fair, safe, and respectful workplaces.

The Collaboration

• Shared Foundations in Worker Care: ER and HSW are united by their legal and ethical mandates to prioritise the rights and well-being of employees, addressing everything from safe working conditions to equitable treatment.
• Conflict Prevention: By understanding physical and psychosocial risks such as goal conflicts, stress, unclear roles, and interpersonal tensions at the operational coal face, HSW can assist ER proactively understand contextual factors that could lead disputes.
• Fairness and Equity: Symbiotically ER ensures fair processes for managing workplace issues, while HSW creates work environments that foster trust, inclusion, and psychological safety.
• Integrated Governance: Aligning ER and HSW ensures compliance with both employment and health and safety laws, creating a unified approach to worker care.

Questions to Reflect On

• Are your ER and HSW strategies aligned to provide a seamless approach to worker care?
• How do both work together to address performance issues? Is there common understanding on where lines blur between the functions?
• Are compliance frameworks combining employment and safety laws in a way that reinforces care and accountability?
• Is there an opportunity to integrate safety and employment governance frameworks for a more cohesive approach?

4. Culture and HSW: One Unified Approach

In many organisations, workplace culture and safety culture still operate as separate workstreams, leading to inconsistent messaging and missed opportunities to align values and beliefs. By adopting the concept of ‘One Culture, Many Contexts’, organisations can move beyond the idea of a separate safety culture and create a unified framework that adapts to different environments.

This unified approach allows for similarities and differences to exist in harmony. For instance, high-risk operational teams may emphasise safety and clear communication, while office-based teams might need focus on mental health and collaboration. These nuances reflect how culture shifts naturally to meet the needs of diverse working contexts while remaining aligned to shared organisational values.

The Collaboration

• Psychological Safety: Extend psychological safety beyond to include all workplace-specific practices to foster openness and trust across all interactions.
• Shared Values: Align culture’s emphasis on care and accountability with broader organisational goals like inclusion, connection, learning and innovation.
• Learning from Everyday Work: Embed learning into daily decision-making. When we fully understand how work is done, conversations naturally align quality, productivity, and safety to deliver operational excellence with accountability.

Questions to Reflect On

• If your HSW strategy is based on safety culture, is it integrated with broader cultural initiatives?
• Do employees perceive safety and well-being as part of their everyday work, or as something separate, compliance or task-based?
• How are learnings from safety initiatives influencing and reinforcing wider cultural goals and ways of working?

5. DEI and HSW: Strengthening Connections Through ESG

DEI and HSW share natural synergies, especially when viewed through the lens of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles. The definition of a “worker” under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 (HSWA)—encompassing employees, contractors, and other contributors—aligns directly with ESG’s emphasis on social responsibility and equity. This expanded definition underscores an organisation’s duty of care to all individuals engaged in its work, regardless of their role, location, or employment status.

Integrating HSW and DEI through an ESG framework ensures that worker well-being, fairness, and inclusion are embedded into organisational strategies and decisions, reinforcing a commitment to equity and social accountability.

The Collaboration

• Worker Participation: HSW’s emphasis on engaging workers in decision-making aligns with DEI goals by ensuring diverse perspectives are included in shaping workplace practices. This fosters a sense of belonging and shared ownership across all worker groups.
• Equity in Well-being: By recognising the varied challenges faced by different groups—such as increased risks for contractors or increased differentiating contexts e.g. communication barriers (ESOL) and the wide range of neurodiversity, physical capabilities etc.—HSW supports DEI initiatives by addressing systemic barriers based on physical, health related and mental health in the workplace context.
• Social Responsibility: ESG principles demand accountability for social outcomes. HSW, paired with DEI, demonstrates tangible actions that prioritise worker safety, mental health, and equity, enhancing the “S” in ESG reporting and outcomes.

Questions to Reflect On

• Does your DEI strategy reflect the expanded definition of “worker” under HSWA, ensuring all contributors are included in well-being initiatives?
• How can stronger worker participation in HSW amplify your DEI efforts?
• How are diverse worker perspectives influencing both HR and HSW planning and decision-making?
• How could combined integration of ESG principles into both HSW and DEI efforts amplify your organisation’s social impact, equity and performance goals?

6. Data with Soul: Moving beyond metrics to meaning

Finally, when aligning HR and HSW, data is a powerful bridge—but only if it’s used effectively. Traditional HR/HSW measures like turnover rates, engagement surveys, and incident reports often sit in separate technology/systems, leaving untapped opportunities for collaboration. Commonly, all organisational data is collected in silos, and largely for measurement/benchmarking purposes. This can lead to reporting numbers rather than uncovering meaningful insights that drive learning and improvement.

By integrating HR and HSW data and exploring its broader context, organisations can uncover patterns that lead to emergent insights. Context enriches data, turning raw numbers into meaningful descriptions of how work is done and how systems really operate. This shift enables HR and HSW to move beyond merely tracking trends to understanding problems with new perspectives and new knowledge.

The Collaboration

• From Measurement to Meaning: By combining HR data (e.g., turnover, DEI, attendance, engagement) with HSW data (e.g., event reports, risk assessments), organisations can move from simply tracking performance to understanding the dynamics influencing the systems.
• Collaborate to turn Data into Wisdom: Data gains meaning when it is organised and contextualised into information. Information becomes knowledge when its significance is understood. Wisdom emerges when knowledge is applied to create purposeful, values-driven decisions and strategies that reflect the complexity and linkages across modern workplaces.
• Emergent Insights: Integrating diverse data sets can reveal emergent patterns—connections and trends that may not be obvious in isolation. These insights help organisations anticipate risks, address psychosocial challenges, and design proactive interventions.
• A Shared Narrative: When HR and HSW collaborate on data, there is opportunity for a unified story of BetterWork for leadership and Boards, demonstrating the contribution of understanding the “whole” system for organisational performance and operational excellence.

Questions to Reflect On

• What opportunities are there for integrating HR and HSW data, and technology systems?
• How are the siloed systems and technology hindering opportunities to uncover patterns, connections, and emerging trends?
• Does your organisation collect data with the intent to create knowledge, learning and wisdom, or is it primarily for compliance and reporting?
• How can adding further context—such as employee/worker voices, operational insights, or lived experiences—transform data into meaningful learning and wisdom?
• How can leveraging integrated data sets identify emergent risks and trends before they escalate into larger challenges?

7. The Synergy of Alignment: Unlocking Opportunities

These are a few broad ideas to show how thinking differently about the HSW relationship with HR can unlock the better organisational outcomes. The benefits include:

• Holistic Solutions: Addressing physical, mental, and social well-being alongside performance and engagement goals.
• Stronger EVP: Demonstrating to employees and candidates that there is focus on workplace experience that adds to their Health and Wellbeing is central to organisational success.
• Resilience and Adaptability: Building workplaces that support flexibility and agility in the face of change while ensuring employees engaged and supported.
• ESG Alignment and Accountability: Integrating HSW with DEI under Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) frameworks ensures that all workers—employees, contractors, and others—are included in well-being initiatives. This reinforces an organisation’s duty of care under the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 (HSWA) and highlights its commitment to social responsibility, equity, and sustainable impact

Taking the First Step

To align HSW with your People strategy:

1. Reflect: Is HSW part of your core HR strategy, or is it still on the sidelines? What opportunities exist for alignment within our technology or other systems?
2. Collaborate: Break down silos between HSW, OD, ER, culture, and DEI teams to align goals and initiatives.
3. Act: Use operational learning and worker participation to ensure strategies meet the unique needs of your workforce.

HSW has evolved. Are you ready to bring it together?

At NextEra, our BetterWork framework helps HR leaders align HSW with their core strategies, creating workplaces where people and organisations capability and capacity grow and perform.

“Without changing our patterns of thought we will not be able to solve the problems we created with our current patterns of thought” – Albert Einstein

 

Author:

Diane Ah-Chan, Director NextEra

www.nexterasafety.com

Diane has over 20 years’ experience in HR, Health, Safety and Wellbeing, Governance and Change. She has worked across a variety of industries from high hazard to financial services. Her passion is to help organisations to embrace innovation to create operational excellence and workplaces that add to the quality of life for all workers.