Duty of Care – Page 66 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Australian PM responds to Insulation Royal Commission

Australia’s Prime Minister Tony Abbott provided his interim response to the Royal Commission into the Home Insulation Program (HIP) in Parliament on 30 September, 2014. One should not expect much sustainable or cultural change from an interim response but Abbott’s responses hold some promise.

The commitments include:

“…[asking] Minister Hunt [Environment] to assume responsibility to oversee the Commonwealth response and to coordinate actions across departments and ministers.”

“…[asking] the Minister for Employment to examine these [OHS] findings, particularly as they relate to the reliance of the Commonwealth on state and territory laws, and his work will inform the government’s final response.”

“Minister Hunt and the Minister for Finance have been asked to recommend options to compensate their next of kin [of the deceased workers]”

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Dangerous personalities making work unsafe – really?

Australian recruiting firm, Sacs Consulting, has released the findings of a survey entitled “Dangerous Personalities making work unsafe“. Such surveys are predominantly marketing exercises and usually, as in this case, there is a limited amount of data available but the results are often broadly distributed and add to the discussion about workplace safety.

The headline itself is a red flag to occupational health and safety (OHS) professionals who are old enough to remember the debate about “blaming the worker” for OHS breaches, injuries and illnesses. Most safety managers and corporate safety programs are applying a “no blame” philosophy to combat the worker focus but the reality is that workers are still being blamed and being dismissed for safety breaches. The Sacs Consulting survey confirms the growing worker focus by looking at the personal rather than the organisational.

The Sacs study found:

“…that some people still ignore OHS rules and act unsafely in the workplace, whereas others value their own safety and that of their colleagues so actively that they try to improve the safety of their workplace. Using personality and values testing, the study was able to predict whether an individual is more or less
likely to be safe at work.” (page 1) Continue reading “Dangerous personalities making work unsafe – really?”

HIP Royal Commission – Risk Registers

Cover of ReportoftheRoyalCommissionintotheHomeInsulationProgram SafetyAtWorkBlog has written previously about the evidence of Margaret Coaldrake to the Royal Commission into the Home Insulation Program (HIP) given at the public hearings and also the occupational health and safety role of risk management and risk registers. The release of the Royal Commission’s final report on 1 September 2014 provides further details on a risk management process that is common to all large projects.

Commissioner Ian Hanger spent considerable time on the issue of the risk register as this was one of the crucial elements in the project’s whole decision-making process up to Ministerial level.

Risk Register

Commissioner Hanger was scathing of the risk management process that not only ignored the risk of worker fatalities but purposely dropped this risk from the register. He was unforgiving in his criticism of Margaret Coaldrake. He criticised her judgement. In working with her Minter Ellison colleague Eric Chalmers:

“it was up to [Coaldrake] to make sure that she and the people working with her were qualified to provide the service that Minter Ellison consultants had been retained to do.” (para 7.11.15)

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Have Moot Courts had their day for OHS purposes?

Ha01-035 The purpose of OHS Moot Courts is to provide a taste of the Court experience in the context of a prosecution for occupational health and safety (OHS). Moot Courts and Mock Trials [for the purposes of this article the concepts are interchangeable] have specific meanings in law schools and overseas but in Australia there is an increasing trend to tweak the moot/mock format to motivate OHS change by showing the consequences of an OHS breach and resultant prosecution. This application of the concept still needs refining both in structure and purpose but may have had its time.

SafetyAtWorkBlog has attended around half a dozen such events since a cold rainy night at Monash University law faculty over 30 years ago. That Moot Court, conducted by the Australian Human Resources Institute, had a genuine sense of occasion and fear. Prosecutors went in hard as is the potential for any court case. A more recent OHS Moot Court was almost jovial and failed to communicate the import of the court process and, therefore, the significance of the potential consequences of the court’s decision. Continue reading “Have Moot Courts had their day for OHS purposes?”

“Put the human being first”

One of the most contentious issues in safety management is the treatment of workers compensation claimants. On 18 August 2014, a small qualitative research report into this area was launched in Melbourne. The report, “Filling the Dark Spot: fifteen injured workers shine a light on the workers compensation system to improve it for others”* identified four themes in the workers’ stories:

a sense of injustice
a lack of control and agency
loss of trust, and
loss of identity.

These themes, or at least some of them, are increasingly appearing on the occupational health and safety (OHS) literature. To establish a successful sustainable workplace culture, one needs to establish and maintain trust. Workers also seem to need some degree of control, or at least influence, over their working conditions and environment. Also workers, and managers, need to receive a fair hearing, what most would describe as “natural justice”.

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Fear of exposure rather than pride in their work

“Due diligence” is an established business management concept that only recently came to be applied to occupational health and safety (OHS) in Australia through the Work Health and Safety (WHS) harmonisation process. It’s credibility comes from the Corporations Act, principally, but also Consumer Protection and, partly, Environmental laws.

iStock_000015900242Small The attention given by OHS/WHS professionals and senior executives to due diligence is already changing how workplace safety is managed in a positive way but recently the

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Disseminating OHS information should not be optional

WorkSafe Victoria has been reviewing a series of enforcement and prosecution policies for some time. One of these policies set for re-issue relates specifically to the publication of prosecutorial information through its website and media releases and, although the “new” policy is not yet available, it may be worth remembering the previous policy, last revised in 2005.

Media Releases

WorkSafe Victoria’s “Supplementary Enforcement and Prosecution Policy on Publishing Prosecution Outcomes and Other Enforcement Information and Data” (no longer available on-line) says that

“WorkSafe will release media statements and authorised representatives will grant media interviews, as appropriate, to the print, electronic, and/or broadcast media.” (original emphasis)

The reason behind this mode of dissemination, and others, is outlined elsewhere in the policy:

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Category: Duty of Care

Australian PM responds to Insulation Royal Commission

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Dangerous personalities making work unsafe – really?

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HIP Royal Commission – Risk Registers

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Have Moot Courts had their day for OHS purposes?

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“Put the human being first”

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Fear of exposure rather than pride in their work

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Disseminating OHS information should not be optional

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