communication – Page 60 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Fatigue is the biggest threat to a person’s safety

Not so long ago, it was considered a legitimate criticism to blame the individual for “doing the wrong thing” at work. Depending on the type of worksite, this was considered “human error” or “bloody stupid”.

Fatigue is an interesting illustration of how occupational health and safety must cope with new perspectives on established hazards. Australian OHS legislation operates on a responsibility to manage the systems of work in a workplace, of which only one element is the worker.

A good incident investigation goes beyond the incident to see what led up to a worker acting the way they did, the reasons behind the decision. Instead of “tell me about your childhood”, OHS practitioners can legitimately ask “tell me about your sleep patterns”, or “tell me about your second job”, or “tell me about your relationship with your partner”, as these can be contributory factors to the decision made on the day or the work environment at the time of the incident.

Some recent AAP articles provide interesting examples of the different contexts in which fatigue as a workplace issue can manifest:

“Ambulance Employees Australia (AEA) said weary paramedics had fallen asleep at the wheel and administered wrong drugs because they did not have enough time off between shifts.

They have called for a minimum 10-hour break between shifts, compared with eight hours under the current award.

But Ambulance Victoria has said the fatigue issue was one of 175 union claims, which it said sought $800 million from pay talks.”

“Investigators examining the near-catastrophe at Melbourne Airport last month are exploring whether fatigue was a factor after being told the pilot had barely slept the day before the flight.

Emirates pilots are permitted to fly a maximum of 100 hours each 28 days and the pilot was also almost at the legal threshold of the number of hours he was able to fly.

Emirates has issued a statement saying safety was a top priority for the airline.”

A higher priority than a good night’s sleep apparently! Clearly it is the spread of hours that is the issue not the total over a fixed period.

Both these examples relate to workers’ interactions with the public and reflect the complexity of OHS’s spread to public safety.

It seems that every investigation now automatically assesses the fatigue level, or impairment, of the participants in incidents in the same way mobile phone records are checked in car accidents and blood-alcohol levels or drug testing in some industrial events.

If your OHS professional does not consider psychosocial issues in developing safety management plans or incident investigation, seek a second opinion, or better yet, make sure the first opinion is comprehensive.

Kevin Jones

Workplace safety can be funny

This week workplace safety on a building site received a much needed dose of humour. The Australian show “ThankGod, You’re Here” had a comedian enter a pretend building site and have to face questions from an OHS inspector as if he was the owner of the site.

The sketch has added impact because of its timing. It is hard to imagine this occurring ten years ago in a society and industry where OHS compliance was less valued, when hardhats were considered optional and when brightly-coloured vests looked stupid. That the sketch is funny is a measure of how OHS regulation and enforcement has matured and just how successful the OHS regulators have been in changing the society’s attitudes to workplace safety in Australia.

Also, it shows something more illustrative of comedy, more true. In the sketch there are some wonderful stunts done by a small earthmover. Only last year there was outrage, and fines, over some forklift stunts done for real by a young driver in Melbourne. The environment makes the difference between laughter and outrage.

The success of the TV show’s concept is also indicated by the issue of the 12-year-old welder on the building site. The comedian, Merrick Watts, removes the issue of age by insisting the young boy is actually in his fifties and just looks younger.

WorkSafe Victoria, whose logo is worn by the pretend inspectors in the sketch, have said that they did not pay for brand placement and that the show did not belittle the work they do. In fact the show “actually showed that we have a job to do and that there are good reasons for it.”

Kevin Jones

The value of brevity in government submissions and business reports

In Australia, at the moment, there are several governmental inquiries that could involve safety management issues. Submissions to inquiries can often be bloated with information that a review panel already knows or can be off topic. Frequently, relevant but not essential information is included in the body of the submission where it could be just as easily included in an appendix.

Past experience in handling Cabinet submissions has indicated that a brief listing of the recommendations or requests is best, as this makes it much easier for the review panels to digest. People tend to forget that their submission is going to be one of, perhaps, hundreds, and that brevity is highly valued in the public service (except perhaps in their own publications and reports?).

This position on brevity is one that should also be applied to client reports concerning workplace safety. Many consultants forget that their clients are already very familiar with their own workplace and don’t need to be shown “how to suck eggs”.

Kevin Jones

Trade unionist talks about nanotechnology risks

In October 2008, SafetyAtWorkBlog spoke with Renata Musolino of the Victorian Trades Hall Council. At that time the trade union movement was finalising its policies and positions on nanotechnology into the campaign that is being rolled out at the moment.

In the SafetyAtWork podcast released in April 2009, Renata talks about how nanotechnologies links with mesothelioma but also some parallels with genetically modified organisms. She discusses the need for more information about the nanomaterials and how one should apply the precautionary principle in this case.

More information about Renata is available at the Victorian Trades Hall Council website

Engagement is Consultation re-badged

Recently an international business established an intranet discussion forum concerning “employee engagement”. By and large, this is another example of business management twaddle.

Essentially, when one engages with another, there is discussion, a conversation and the sharing of ideas in a cooperative, positive manner. In OHS circles this is called “consultation”. By discussing issues, people learn the basics, they refine their understandings and, often, come to a consensus or a resolution.

“Engagement” is another word for what happens on a daily basis in workplaces everywhere. What is bothersome is when a new management term is generated in order to, primarily, sell a new management book, and in a much lower priority, to provide a new perspective.

In the current edition of Australia’s business magazine, BRW, there is a discussion on engagement, (not available online). Through an OHS perspective, interpret the following quotes about “employee engagement scores):

“About 40 per cent of employees were failing at the most basic level, saying they either didn’t know what was expected of them or didn’t have the tools to do it.”

OHS = consultation, job description, induction, supervision.

“Those in a leadership position now are taking advantage and redoubling their efforts around employee engagement.”

OHS = leadership, safety culture

The article makes a useful distinction that an “engaged employee” does not equal a “happy employee”.

The BRW article does not, however, discuss the possible downsides of engagement. There is a risk that benchmarking of engagement may applied inappropriately and, according to the CIPD:

“Research confirms however that there is a significant gap between levels of engagement found among UK employees and those that would produce optimum performance. HR professionals need to recognise that engagement is a strategic issue that cannot simply be left to manage itself.”

Engagement is another tool for management but just how many tools are needed?

In short, a management system needs to talk with employees, listen to employees, and support employees. Wow, how radical. It can be that simple.

Kevin Jones

Migrant worker safety

Recently one of the Australian boutique labour law firms ran a seminar on employment issues related to migrant workers. Australia has a history of using workers from the Pacific Islands, principally, in agriculture. Chinese have been working in Australia since the goldfields of the 1800s. New Zealanders are so frequent that the countries almost share an economy in some ways. Some labour is imported, other labour is invited or sought.

The global economic problems has exacerbated the difficulties many countries face with legal and illegal migrant workers. Australia is not immune. There may be less and less water in the country, certainly in the south, but it is still considered a land of opportunity by neighbours.

Workplace safety issues are perhaps the easiest to deal with in this labour sector as the employment status is not relevant to the obligation to provide a safe and healthy work environment.

The safety training, instruction and supervision matters are similarly unaffected by employment status. However it has always been a difficult part of an OHS manager and HR manager’s job to make sure that workers understand their obligations and duties. In Victoria, one of the first OHS Codes of Practice in the 1980s concerned providing OHS information in languages other than English. It was probably the most ignored Code of Practice of all.

Recently, WorkSafe Victoria has issued Compliance Codes. Following the recommendations and techniques in these codes implies compliance and can be wonderful for the small business sector. One of the new codes is on communicating in languages other than English This is a great start but there needs a much greater effort, almost a movement, for Australia to avoid the problems facing countries like England.

In late-March 2009, the UK law firm Irwin Mitchell reported the following statistics

The report [by the Centre for Corporate Accountability], which makes the figures public for the first time and was compiled following Freedom of Information requests to the Health and Safety Executive, shows that a dozen migrant workers died in the construction industry in the year 2007/08 – at least double the figure expected and a six-fold increase in the number who died just five years earlier.

The 12 deaths comprised 17% of the total number of fatalities in the sector last year – more than double the HSE’s estimate of migrants making up around 8% of the total construction sector workforce.

Migrant deaths in other sectors is also on the increase, with the number of fatalities of non-UK workers up from nine in 2005/6 to 18 in 2007/8 and the proportion also doubling from 4.1% to 7.9% in the same period, against figures showing that 5.4% of the total workforce comprises migrants.

No official information is currently available on the level of injuries to migrant workers, as the HSE does not record nationality in injury cases, though estimates put the figure as high as 11% – again, double the expected level.

Many workplaces have already dealt with safety issues with migrant labour. Crews in rail maintenance, for instance, are often on ethical lines so that colleagues educate each other. Often workplaces call on an established worker from a specific ethnic area to take the lead in supervising others and passing on OHS information. These adhoc processes still need to be verified as effective but have worked in many workplaces for decades.

A recent rumour posted to the Australian website Crikey.com illustrates the type of attitude to migrant workers and the mixing of concerns about safety and industrial issues.

A Chinese owned mining project is advertising for a Bilingual (English Mandarin) Registered Nurse on their website [since removed]. The role is stated to be designed for liaison with Chinese workers and is required to have industrial safety knowledge, reporting directly to a company director? How many Chinese workers is this project bringing into Australia given the recent restrictions on 457s [migrant work visas], what about the requirement for foreign workers to have some competency in English, anecdotal evidence that building and construction labour rates are already decreasing and how would the unions view this approach to health and safety of foreign workers?

One OHS expert at the law firm’s seminar accepted that the language requirements were woefully inadequate and not suited for the workplace situation. It would be refreshing to see an OHS professional association begin lobbying the government on improving the language criteria for visa eligibility.

The unions would be equally concerned about the safety of any workers onsite, hopefully regardless of the workers’ union membership status.

Australia is in a lucky situation where many workplaces could continue to operate without migrant labour but the world and its economy is changing, and Australia will be dragged into the real world of the modern international workforce. It is lucky because it has the opportunity to prepare. It is such a shame that the preparation remains so thin.

Kevin Jones

WorkSafe Victoria’s plans for the future

At the Safety In Action Conference in Melbourne last week the CEO Of WorkSafe Victoria, John Merritt, told the delegates that over the coming weeks and months we will see the following:

The “Homecomings” series of workplace safety ads have been purchased by Washington State and will be broadcast shortly. Merritt expects the campaign to spread across the United States and, maybe, into Canada;
WorkSafe has developed fake vending machines for use at exhibitions and trade displays which display replacement body parts, fingers as USB sticks (pictured below);
WorkSafe will be introducing an advisory support scheme for the medium-sized businesses, modelled on the Small Business scheme;
A team of advisers is targeting poor-performing large employers. Merritt said that “50 large employers account for 11% of all injuries WorkSafe sees”;
A major street art campaign will be launched by the end of April 2009
A new series of ads to be run on regional and rural television based on local sporting legends as part of the country football and netball sponsorship;
The graphic young worker advertisements will be re-run at appropriate times. Merritt acknowledged that the ads have generated many complaints but are transmitting the right message to the target audience.

WorkSafe will also maintain their focus on the “jugglers” those business people or administrative staff that are essential to each organisation because they are in charge of dozens of business processes. WorkSafe surveys of the jugglers have shown that less than 10% of their time is spent on OHS matters, around 30% of them are trained in their tasks and most operate without support.

Kevin Jones

Category: communication

Fatigue is the biggest threat to a person’s safety

Like this:

Workplace safety can be funny

Like this:

The value of brevity in government submissions and business reports

Like this:

Trade unionist talks about nanotechnology risks

Like this:

Engagement is Consultation re-badged

Like this:

Migrant worker safety

Like this:

WorkSafe Victoria’s plans for the future

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: