Category: business

Who would buy asbestos?

A busy mum, two little kids playing on the carpet in the corridor.  She is busy pulling out an old gas heater from the cavity in the wall.  Dust everywhere.  She wants to recreate the old fashioned open fireplace that was there.  The job will take a few days, she’s not in a hurry.    Then the neighbour asks her gently, “Have you checked, we had asbestos behind our fireplace?”  Mum’s blood goes cold.  She looks at the kids.

‘Who in their right mind would buy asbestos?’  you may ask.  After all the publicity, the growing numbers of tragic mesothelioma sufferers in Australia, the lung cancers, the famous court cases, the Hardies’ debacle.

There are three main ways you can still buy asbestos in Australia.  First, a small number of components used in industry and the defence forces still contain asbestos in sealed conditions.  For example, a shock absorber in the front wheel assembly of an aeroplane may contain an asbestos gasket.  Certain specialised gaskets used in segments of the chemical industry may contain asbestos.  The risk to workers and the general public is very small.

Then you can buy asbestos when you purchase gravel made from crushed masonry from demolished buildings that contained asbestos.  Some 10 million tonnes of such bricks and concrete are recycled every year in Australia.  Continue reading “Who would buy asbestos?”

Through Wilful Blindness I begin to see

Put your hand over your ears and start saying La La La La La La La.  That is willful blindness (or, technically,deafness, but let’s not quibble).

Margaret Heffernan, author of a new paperback edition of  “Wilful Blindness  – Why we ignore the obvious at our peril“, discovered wilful blindness while researching the trial of the Enron executives.  Heffernan says that

“Judge [Simeon] Lake was applying the legal principle of wilful blindness: you are responsible if you could have known, and should have known, something which instead you strove not to see.” (page 1)

Heffernan’s book is not simply a new book on business management. Heffernan acknowledges that wilful blindness is not limited to a workplace, person or management theory.  She also says wilful blindness is not always a negative.  It is this breadth of approach to the topic that increases the worthiness of her book. Continue reading “Through Wilful Blindness I begin to see”

OHS inspections save businesses money

A recent article in Science about OHS inspections has gained considerable attention after Michael Blanding wrote about the findings in a Harvard Business School blog. According to the executive summary:

“In a natural field experiment, researchers [ Associate Professor Michael W. Toffel and colleague David I. Levine] found that companies subject to random OSHA inspections showed a 9.4 percent decrease in injury rates compared with uninspected firms.

The researchers found no evidence of any cost to inspected companies complying with regulations. Rather, the decrease in injuries led to a 26 percent reduction in costs from medical expenses and lost wages translating to an average of $350,000 per company.

The findings strongly indicate that OSHA regulations actually save businesses money.”

That research should give enormous heart to OHS regulators around the world and reduce criticism from business groups. The findings have been defined as “definitive” but this is like saying that research into Scandinavian workplaces and society can be relevant to other countries. Research in OHS and workers compensation in the United States is relevant to the United States with mostly curiosity value to other nations. Continue reading “OHS inspections save businesses money”

FindTheBest seriously misjudges on its data services for workplace deaths and injuries

Many organisations are beginning to assess their performance in occupational health and safety (OHS), mostly through spreadsheet graphics and lead and lag indicators.  These “databases” provide comparisons of activity with the hope of showing positive progress on safety.  FindTheBest.com has been building comparison websites for some time and has applied their mystical Web2.0 algorithms to workplace safety data from the United States in its FindTheData website.  It has several sites that may be of interest to OHS professionals – Work Injuries and Death and Dangerous Jobs.

Dangerous Jobs allows you to select the occupational categories you are interested in and then compare their statistical data.  For instance, comparing Farmers and Ranchers to Structural Steel Workers shows an annual fatality rate of 39.7 to 30.3 based on hours, respectively.  These comparisons are based on data from the United States Department of Labor statistics.  But the question on the comparison is so what?  What benefit can be gained by comparing these two sets of data?  None, as far as I can see.

The glossary for Dangerous Jobs lists the top couple of popular comparisons as

  • Top 7 Most Dangerous Jobs in US
  • Police and sheriff’s patrol officers vs. Electricians

The first has curiosity value but the second is reminiscent of the adolescent (or drunk) speculation on who would win in a fight between Darth Vader and Gigantor?  Pointless speculation that sounds like it could result in some interesting information.  Just maybe.  Perhaps. Continue reading “FindTheBest seriously misjudges on its data services for workplace deaths and injuries”

Another salary survey shows increased demand for OHS professionals

Australian recruiting company, Hays, has released its annual salary surveyin which it says that there is increasing demand for OHS professionals in Australia however the salary levels seem comparatively low, particularly at the entry-level. The survey says that the introduction of harmonised OHS laws in most Australian States has:

“…led to increased accountability and thus demand for high risk safety experts.”

It could be said that many safety experts have been “high risk” but the quote above places safety in a risk context.  Safety professionals must be able to understand and deal with business risks in the broader context.  In some sectors risk management integrates OHS but in others, where risk management is almost exclusively concerned with insurances and safety is the purview of a Health and Safety Representative, OHS is shunned as a foreign concept or a poorly under threat. Continue reading “Another salary survey shows increased demand for OHS professionals”

Where can I get my own Cynthia Carroll?

The June 2012 edition of the Harvard Business Review includes a fascinating article (extract online ) on safety by the controversial CEO of Anglo American, Cynthia Carroll.  The whole article is well worth reading but there was one element that I found particularly interesting, Carroll’s mention of zero harm.

Carroll visited operations in South Africa where Anglo American employed 86,000 people from various cultural background s and literacy. She writes:

“When I visited the operations, my conversations with local managers were frustrating. Safety was improving, they assured me, but it would never be perfect. My goal of zero harm was simply not achievable. The head of our platinum operations at the time insisted repeatedly, “Cynthia, you just have to understand…” As I talked to people and examined the facilities, I wondered how much authority someone who is underground for hours on end, with a shift supervisor right behind him, really has. I questioned whether a line worker had the power to put up his hand and say, “I’m not going to do this, because it is unsafe.””

Following a fatality on the day of her visit and in conjunction with the safety concerns she had, Carroll closed the Rustenburg platinum mine for a structural safety makeover. Continue reading “Where can I get my own Cynthia Carroll?”

OHS reform is a relatively small regulatory concern for Australian small businesses

Many business groups in Australia have been bemoaning the potential increase in OHS compliance paperwork, often on the basis if the impact on small business, applying the logic that the small business sector has the least capacity to cope. Yet a survey of small business attitudes to “red tape” released this week questions the level of concern over OHS.

The June 2012 Sensis Business Index clearly shows that almost one-quarter of Australian small businesses want taxation regulation to be reformed most of all. Only 2% believed that OHS was the regulation needing most reform.

CEO of the Council of Small Business Organisations of Australia, Peter Strong, stated that

“The findings…. provide a framework for many important areas of regulatory reform that will benefit small business…”

As a tool for lobbying government on taxation reform, the survey results are supportive but in relation to OHS reform, OHS is equal to pay rates and planning regulations at 2%. Continue reading “OHS reform is a relatively small regulatory concern for Australian small businesses”

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