Category: business

What is the OHS “public interest”?

On 7 May 2010 Judge Lacava of the County Court of Victoria increased the $A25,000 fine applied to A Bending Company to $A75,000.

WorkSafe’s Acting Director for Health and Safety, Stan Krpan, said in a media release:

“The fact that the Director of Public Prosecutions [DPP] found the original penalty inadequate, and the increase in the fine on appeal, demonstrates the courts’ attitude towards health and safety offences.”

The DPP made the appeal to the County Court after a request for review of the original fine was made by WorkSafe Victoria.  According to the judge’s decision (not yet available online):

“The appeal by the Director is made pursuant to section 84 of the Magistrates’ Court Act 1989. The section gives the Director the power to appeal to this Court “if satisfied that an appeal should be brought in the public interest“.” [emphasis added]

So how was the public interest served by increasing the fine by $A50,000? Continue reading “What is the OHS “public interest”?”

Planning for an ageing workforce – statistical clues

There has been a lot of media attention on the potential impact of an ageing population on all aspects of our society, workplaces included.  In terms of OHS, there may be an increased risk of injury as people are encouraged to work longer and past the compulsory retirement age of around 60 to 65.  But it is worth looking beyond the newspaper reports to get a better understanding 0f the level of risk presented by current population trends.

A report by Professor Diane Gibson for the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia is a terrific way to begin to comprehend the reality of the risk.  The report, Beyond life expectancy,  was released in May 2010 and provides an interpretation of the 2006 Australian Census data.  From a cursory scan of the contents there are important facts that challenge us, particularly if we manage, in any way, people in the workplace. Continue reading “Planning for an ageing workforce – statistical clues”

Economic opportunities in the need to comply

Standards Australia may have been going through difficult financial times but the company that sells the documents created by Standards Australia is doing very well.

The Australian Financial Review on 26 May 2010 (not available online) reported on the continuing growth of SAI Global and the increasingly important role it may play in the United States’s emphasise on compliance.  The AFR reports that the company receives 22% of its revenue from the US and growth in sales is tipped to reach 22% in 2009/10.  So it is a good investment option but its influence may also be important to note for those corporate OHS professionals who operate in a world of compliance, best practice and audits. Continue reading “Economic opportunities in the need to comply”

The risk of being over-policied

The latest OHS podcast from Boardroom Radio reinforces the need to enforce company policies.  The impliacation is that it is very easy to equate legislative compliance with the existence of a policy instead of the implementation of a policy.

The need to keep polices and procedures simple was mentioned but there is the risk that brevity does not necessarily equal clarity.  This links to earlier SafetyAtWorkBlog articles that discuss communication.  It is one thing to have rules, it is another to make sure workers know them and yet another to have faith that they are being implemented.  The emphasis on application and enforcement cannot be stressed enough. Continue reading “The risk of being over-policied”

Is illiteracy a big safety risk?

In a couple of years all Australian States will probably have OHS laws which require active consultation on workplace safety matters.  But how effective will the consultation be if a noticeable part of one’s workforce struggles with literacy?

For many years OHS included a gentle and steady push for OHS information to be provided in Languages Other Than English (LOTE).  Many OHS regulators had Codes of Practice providing guidance on how to communicate safety issues to workers who cannot speak or write English.

The Australian Industry Group (AIGroup) has been running a project on improving workplace literacy for some time.  AIGroup sees literacy as a major impediment to productivity and safety.  The ACTU sees the risks posed to one’s safety predominantly.  On 26 May 2010, AIGroup’s CEO Heather Ridout wrote in The Australian newspaper (not available online) about the project and the workplace risks.  A report from the literacy project has found that “low levels of literacy and numeracy were an issue for”:

Labourers and process worker 45%
Apprentices 25%
Technicians 23%
Administrative staff 17%
IT staff 13%

Continue reading “Is illiteracy a big safety risk?”

“We will trust but we will verify” – upcoming lessons from the Gulf of Mexico

The mass media is full of reports on legal action being taken on behalf of shareholders in BP over the continuing oil spill from the former Deepwater oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

An Australian video report was broadcast on 25 May 2010 and a composite article has appeared in The Australian on 26 May 2010 as well as elsewhere. Many outlets are mentioning the law suit (Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority and Robert Freedman v Anthony B Hayward et al, Court of Chancery for the state of Delaware, No. 5511) but no details of the suit are publicly available at the moment.

Although safety is mentioned as one of the bases for the suit, it is likely that environmental impact will get prominence over occupational safety and that impact on stock value will be of the most concern.   The shareholder outrage mentioned in some of the articles seems to focus mostly on the financial impact on BP share value rather than any moral outrage on environmental impact or dead and injured workers.

BP CEO Anthony Hayward has acknowledged the substantial  “reputational risk” but his comments are almost always reported surrounded by financial bad news.   Continue reading ““We will trust but we will verify” – upcoming lessons from the Gulf of Mexico”

Integrating safety in Lean/Six Sigma

At the recent Safety In Action Conference in Melbourne, Sia Evans was scheduled to speak about integrating safety into Lean/Six Sigma.   The management processes were known to me but I had not associated them with OHS management so her blending of the two was intriguing.

I arranged an interview with Sia a couple of weeks prior to her presentation having met her briefly some time before.  As we were having coffee on a balcony in sunny Melbourne we discussed a broad range of issues including the cultural impacts that Sia’s approach had achieved for her employer, Computershare.

She also showed how occupational health and safety can be improved in a workplace by not talking about occupational health and safety.  Sia’s training programs instilled the importance of safety in employees without some of the baggage that OHS training feels obliged to include.

The interview has been edited into a podcast that can be accessed below.

Please let us know of any issues or thoughts the interview may have raised and I will ask Sia to respond.

Kevin Jones

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