Greetings, everyone, and welcome to our Week 1 lecture on Safe and Healthy Workplaces. Hopefully, you've had an opportunity to review the Week 1 overview in Canvas where you will see that we will be covering workplace safety and health in two parts over Week 1 and Week2. And the reason for that is even though workplace safety and health do complement each other and have many similarities, there are some differences that you need to be aware of. So the best way to ensure that you understand those differences is to split up the subject matter and cover it over two weeks.
So you'll have reading assignments and hands-on work assignments this week and next week that explain these differences. And in the lecture today, I'm going to give you an overview of what those differences are. So these are the topics that I'm going to cover in the lecture today. So first will be what are safe workplaces. Next is what are healthy workplaces, and then moving on to the importance of safe and healthy workplaces.
And finally, keeping our workplaces safe and healthy. And at the end of the lecture, I do have some resource links for you. Okay, so what are safe workplaces? Well, they are free from hazards that cause incidents that result in injuries to the outer body. And these hazards include but are not limited to electrical hazards, machine and mechanical hazards, and confined space hazards.
And so you'll see in the Week 1 module that we'll be covering these three categories of hazards this week. And I say not limited to because there really are endless types of hazards that can injure the body. But the hazards that we will cover this week and next week in this class are common in many general industry workplaces. And general industry workplaces are basically any workplace that doesn't fall into other workplaces over which OSHA has governance.
And so those are agricultural workplaces, the construction workplaces, disaster sites, and also workplaces in the maritime industry. And so one of the next classes that you'll take in this program after this class actually is construction safety and that's a later course. And in that class, we're going to cover an entirely different group of hazards that are more specific to construction workplaces. So just keep that in mind as you're working through Week 1 and Week 2 and learning about the hazards that we study in this class.
That when we do move on to the construction safety class, it's going to be yet an entirely different group of hazards that we'll be studying. So I just wanted to make sure that everyone was clear on that. And so what are healthy workplaces? So these are workplaces that are free from hazards that cause incidents that normally result in illnesses, and as you know when you become ill, it's normally the inner part of your body that's affected.
And so these hazards include but are not limited to ergonomic hazards, noise hazards, and chemical and toxic substance hazards. So this is the second half of the group of hazards that we're covering in this class, and you'll note that these are the hazards that are actually going to be covered next week in Week 2. And as I mentioned a few minutes ago, there's one group of overall hazards for this class that we're covering over Week 1 and Week 2. So for Week 1, we're covering workplace safety hazards, and then in Week 2, we'll be covering workplace health hazards.
All right, on the importance of safe and healthy workplaces. Well, the number one reason is the preservation of life and quality of life for everyone in the workplace. And so this includes employees and managers, contractors, and even visitors. Whoever is associated with that workplace we, want them to leave that workplace the same way that they came to that workplace. And other important reasons are minimizing and eliminating costs.
So there is a great amount of cost involved with losses in productivity, and so this is usually due to time off that employees have to take due to being injured or becoming ill on the job. Also, property damage can be very costly. Incidents often can result in property damage, as well as injuring or making employees ill. And then there's Workers' Compensation costs, which pay for employees' doctor bills if they've become injured or fall ill on the job.
And also, sometimes Workers' Compensation actually pays the employee while they're off of work and not able to come in onto the job. So those are other important reasons, as well, to keep workplaces safe and healthy. And then also, just to protect the reputation and public relations of the company. And by doing so, they avoid the risk of employees leaving the company. Many employees probably don't want to work for an employer who has a reputation for not keeping their workplaces safe and healthy.
And then also, there's always a potential of losing future business opportunities with like vendors, or suppliers, other companies, the government. They may not want to do business with people who are known for having unsafe and unhealthy workplaces. But always remember, the number one reason is the preservation of life and the quality of life. Okay, so keeping our workplaces safe and healthy, it really starts with teamwork.
Everyone, no matter what your role is, we all have a part to play in keeping our workplaces safe and healthy. Now from a compliance and a program standpoint, however, there is hazard identification and evaluation, hazard control and prevention, incident investigations, training, and communications. As well as continuous improvement that are all essential, as well, to keeping workplaces safe and healthy. And so you'll read more about each of these aspects in your textbook throughout the term.
And specifically for this week, you have a homework assignment on hazard identification and so you see hazard identification highlighted there in yellow. And so in this assignment, you will be conducting a virtual workplace inspection. And inspections are a highly effective method for identifying hazards. And you will also be using the NIOSH Hierarchy of Controls to develop solutions to address the hazards that you find during your inspection.
And the NIOSH Hierarchy of Controls is in your learning materials for Week 1. So I just wanted to give you a heads up on that. So that does complete the lecture for Week 1, and on this last slide are some additional resources for you that you can review when you have a free moment on safe and healthy workplaces. Now there are numerous resources already that are linked in Canvas for you during each week of the term.
But these are just some additional resources if you'd like more information. So if you have any questions or comments about the information that was presented today, please submit them via the Canvas inbox messaging feature, and thank you for tuning in.