The BP Deepwater Horizon disaster has faded to become another safety leadership failure to be discussed in the OHS and risk management courses but some new research ($ paywall) in Critical Perspectives on Accounting provides a fresh perspective on BP’s safety culture and leadership prior to the major disaster by deconstructing the speeches of the the then-CEO, Tony Hayward.
I have purchased Kevin Burns’ book “PeopleWork” after receiving an email promotion but before I did I followed the link to his website and watched an embedded video where Kevin says:
“At no time in history have there been better processes and procedures in workplace safety and at no time in history have there been more certified safety professionals but at the same time the number of workplace incidents keep rising across the board.”
Any salesman is allowed some hyperbole but the last point does not stack up and is a bit confusing. For instance workplace fatalities have been declining in Australia for some decades but new work-related hazards are being acknowledged and existing hazards that were once dismissed are now being addressed. The number of certified occupational health and safety (OHS) professionals is irrelevant as the laws have existed for much longer and it is the laws with which employers must comply, not the advice of the OHS professional.
But Kevin Burns talks specifically about the number of workplace incidents and this is almost impossible to quantify.
Just after I purchased Kevin’s book I received a research paper entitled “
Following, ostensibly, the Four Corners exposé of labour hire exploitation in Australia last year, the Victorian Government established an inquiry. That Inquiry’s final report has been released with lots of recommendations, several pertaining to occupational health and safety (OHS). The Government’s media release response is HERE. The main recommendations related to OHS are: I recommend…
Cost is the last consideration in occupational health and safety (OHS) but is usually the first consideration in all other decisions. “Can we afford to improve something? No. So let’s do something else”. There is something fundamentally skewed in determining the cost-benefit analysis when it comes to workplace safety. For several years Safe Work Australia (SWA)…