As mentioned last month in SafetyAtWorkBlog, the Victoria-designed “Homecomings” advertisements are to be launched on United States television. The Department of Labor & Industries for Washington State announced the ads on 19 May 2009. According to the DL&I media release
“These ads are particularly effective at bringing home the importance of safety in the workplace and the effects it can have on so many people,” said Don Brunell, president of the Association of Washington Business. “When an accident happens at work, it affects everyone – family, friends and co-workers.”
It is rare for anything of great relevance to occupational health and safety to come from the annual budget statement of the Australian government. There is nothing directly relevant from the statement issued earlier this week except for the lifting of the retirement age to 67 in 2023.
Compulsory retirement age does not mean that people stop working. If that was the case, farming and the Courts would be very different organisations. The retirement age has more to do with financial independence or the pension eligibility than anything else but the government’s decision has focused the media and commentators on the fact that people will be working beyond traditional retirement age.
The announcement this week also supported the reality that has been increasing for many people for over a year now that the level of retirement income has plummeted because of the global economic recession. People have a growing financial need to work, not simply a desire.
This will change the way that worker health will be managed by companies and by the individual. Watch for even more interest in “the best companies to work for” campaigns. In fact it should not be long before someone starts marketing on the theme of “is your health up to working into your seventies?”
This morning a package of interesting statistics were presented to a breakfast seminar held by Douglas Workplace & Litigation Lawyers. One of the regular speakers, Ira Galushkin, provided the following Australian statistics
High risk employees (5+ Risks) are at work but not productive 32.7% of the time compared to low risk employees (0-2 Risks) who are not productive 14.5% of the time.
The productivity difference between health and unhealthy employees is therefore 18.2% or 45 days per annum.
High risk employees average 5.1 hours/month absence versus 2.4 hours/month for low risk employees. This amounts to 32.4 hours (over 4 days) days per annum.
Healthy employees average 1-2 sick days per annum versus 18 days for those in the lowest health and wellbeing category.
The unhealthiest employees are productive for only about 49 hours out of each month compared to around 140 hours/month for the most healthy.
Poor health can account for an average 5% loss in productivity across the entire Australian workforce with the unhealthiest group reporting a 13% drop in productivity. About half [of] this is related to chronic conditions such as headaches, hay fever and neck/back pain,whilst half can be accounted for by lifestyle factors such as inactivity, smoking, obesity etc
All of this information shows the importance of workers maintaining their own fitness in order to live longer, but also to be able to present a case, if necessary, about their own productivity levels and how they have been saving their employer big dollars.
If we need to be able to work till older than previously, we will want to stay in a job we enjoy and that values us. Some longterm health planning may be required by all of us.
There is some debate today about whether Swine Flu (in deference to the request from some pig farmers, now renamed “the Mexican Flu outbreak of 2009“) has peaked. Colleagues in Asia over the weekend told SafetyAtWorkBlog that in most circles, the Mexican Flu outbreak has not generated the same level of interest, or concern, as elsewhere. Perhaps the media studies academics can contribute to a redefinition of “global pandemic” as any disease outbreak that occurs in a country next to the United States. (Beware the Canadian Beaver Flu)
But flippancy aside, this dry-run at an influenza pandemic has many benefits and one particularly useful benefit will be a change in attitude to presenteeism in workplaces.
As the Southern Hemisphere enters its flu season and the early round of flu vaccinations concludes, Australia and others will be a test case for any attitudinal change in workers towards bringing their flu-ridden bodies to work, or in workers objecting to the contagious hazards that the presenteeists (?) introduce.
It has always been a suitable HR and OHS process to send someone home who appears impaired or unfit-for-work. In the past “essential” staff would continue to work for the sake of workload or productivity. Over time the folly of such an attitude has become obvious and workplace safety advocates have had a major role in this change. The increased absenteeism of, and the decreased productivity from, a team who have been infected by a single member is now an unacceptable health hazard and productivity threat.
This change has also been helped by the increasingly viable option in some industries for people to work from home.
The Mexican flu outbreak is likely to verify the reality of presenteeism, probably from colleagues demanding that control measures be taken on the unthinking infectious workmate. Masks may be tolerated but in the tradition of the hierarchy of controls, elimination is always preferable to personal protective equipment.
In the 1980s taxation department and many other workplaces, telephone hygienists were employed to disinfect telephone handsets. Modern handsets cannot be disassembled in the same way however, SafetyAtWorkBlog was reminded of this, at the time, peculiar hygiene practices when watching Mexicans disinfecting subways and public telephones.
In all things there must be balance, but the Mexican flu outbreak of 2009 will undoubtedly revise the way people touch things and others. In relation to influenza this is a good thing.
According to a report in the Australian Financial Review (page 5, not available online) on 14 April 2009, the costs of work-related injury and disease has increased to $A57.5 billion. This represents 5.9% of the country’s gross domestic product, up from 5% in 2000-01.
Of perhaps more concern is the sectors of society which are estiimated to bear these increasing costs. 49% of costs are borne by workers, 47% by the community and 3% by the employers. Even if the insurance costs were allocated to employers, this would only amount to 18% of the injury and diseases costs.
The figures from the report conducted by the Australian Safety & Compensation Council could justify the push by some in the OHS profession to move workplace safety into the area of public health. Regardless, the spread of the cost should be borne in mind when OHS organisations lobby government for more support and attention.
This annual event seems to receive more attention in Europe than elsewhere although over the years several Australian capital cities have erected workers’ memorial stones. It is usually here that ceremonies occur.
I always attend these services in my own right as it helps to keep me grounded as I wade through risk assessments, policies, consultations, and other safety ephemera.
One of the chilling parts of the service is always the reading of those who have died over the previous twelve months. This has echoes of the 9/11 recital each year but for the worker memorial there is a new set of names each year and a new set of families and a new round of grieving.
Please check your local town and city activities lists and attend this year’s event.
In support, the UK’s Hazards magazine has produced a simple but effective poster that can be downloaded.
Family-friendly work initiatives always get increased attention around International Women’s Day. This is a shame as work/life balance is not gender specific, however the dominant Western family structures make the application of the concept relative to gender. As long as the matter is perceived as a “women’s issue”, it will struggle for attention in a basically patriarchal society.
Family-friendly work structures are predominantly associated with hours of work and leave entitlements. These don’t seem to be OHS matters as they are mostly handled through HR or the pay department however there is a link and it is a link that work/life and work/family advocates may use as a strong argument for their cause.
Leave is a worker entitlement for several reasons:
Situations may occur where the employee is required to stay home to look after an ill relative;
The employee may stay home as they are too sick to work; and
The employee may feel they need time away from work to rebalance their lives.
The second point has an OHS relevance because going to work while sick may introduce a hazard to your work colleagues – presenteeism. In many jurisdictions it is a breach of an employee’s OHS legislative obligations to not generate hazards for their work colleagues or members of the public while at work.
The third point relates to an individual’s management of stress and/or fatigue.
In Australia, some workplaces allow for “doona days” (or for those in the Northern hemisphere’s winter at the moment “duvet days”). These are days where a workplace and the employee would benefit psychologically from some time-out in order to “reboot”.
It may also be a valid fatigue management mechanism where long hours have been worked to the extent where attending the workplace may present hazards to others, or to themselves by feeling impaired, or have the employee working well below the appropriate level of attentiveness for the job to be properly done.
Leave entitlements, to some extent, form part of the employer’s legislative obligations to have a safe and healthy work environment. But they also support the worker’s obligations to look after themselves and not present hazards to others.
The OHS element of leave entitlements should be emphasized when discussions of family-friendly workplaces occur. Not only does it legitimately raise the profile of OHS in business planning, it can add some moral weight to an issue that can get bogged down in industrial relations.
Some readers may want to check out recent presentations to the US Senate in early-March 2009, by various people on the issue of family-friendly work structure. These include
Eileen Appelbaum, Director of the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers University,
Dr Heather Boushey, Senior Economist at the Center for American Progress Action Fund,
Rebia Mixon Clay, a home health care worker who cares for her brother in Chicago. (Rebia’s video is below)
“Women and men united to end violence against women and girls”
The organising committee is at pains to stress that although this is a global theme, individual nations, individual states and organisations are able to set their own themes. Some themes already chosen include
Australia, UNIFEM: Unite to End Violence Against Women
Australia, QLD Office for Women: Our Women, Our State
Australia, WA Department for Communities: Sharing the Caring for the Future
UK, Doncaster Council: Women’s Voices and Influence
UK, Welsh Assembly Government: Bridging the Generational Gap
Given that Australian health care workers suffer occupational violence, amongst many other sectors, and that employers are obliged to assist workers who may be subjected to violence at work or the consequences of non-work-related violence, it seems odd that so often the major advocates of International Women’s Day remain the unions.
It is also regrettable that many of the themes internationally and locally are responding to negatives rather than motivating action from strengths.
As is indicated from the list above, the public sector agencies are keen to develop programs around the international day. The societal and career disadvantages of women are integral to how safety is managed.
Stress, violence, adequate leave entitlements, security, work/life balance, chronic illness – all of these issues are dealt with by good safety professionals. Perhaps a safety organisation or agency in Australia could take up the theme of “Safe work for women” and look at these issues this year using gender as the key to controlling these hazards in a coordinated and cross-gender fashion.
