Category: education

Inductions, technology and effectiveness

In relation to the new harmonised laws in Australia Amy Towers recently stated in a media release that

“Many employers still haven’t got it quite right. While most have an understanding of their new health and safety responsibilities, we’re finding the practices they do have in place don’t sufficiently meet the new compliance requirements – particularly for managing temporary or contracting staff…”

This is no great surprise.  While reviewing the compliance with incoming legislation, many law firms have similarly found that clients were not compliant with existing OHS laws.

Towers goes on to say that “businesses are most at risk of non-compliance in these areas:

Construction induction certification could move online

E-learning has become an acceptable option for many industry training sectors.  In Australia, this industry is still in its early stages.  One of those reasons is that the internet resources are not as extensive as in other countries but the Federal Government began to establish a National Broadband Network (NBN) that should allow better e-learning servicing.

Last week, occupational health and safety inductions were provided with the NBN and e-learning approach.  According to a media statement issued in early February 2012:

“With Australia moving to adopt a national qualification to enable workers to enter a construction site, a project is currently underway to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of an immersive 3D computer game to deliver occupational health and safety (‘White Card’) certification training for the construction industry.

This would enable workers to use a training computer game to learn and be assessed for the unit of competency required by the National Code of Practice for Induction for Construction Work, without being compromised by time and place. Importantly, it also allows trainees to gain real world experience ‘on site’ or ‘using’ industrial equipment without exposing them to potential risk.” [links added]

SafetyAtWorkBlog posed some questions to one of the participants of the program, Skills Tasmania, and received the following responses from one of the program partners, Mark O’Rourke, the Educational Advisor of the Curriculum Innovation Unit of the Victoria University Continue reading “Construction induction certification could move online”

OHS Strategy to nowhere

Throughout 2011, Safe Work Australia (SWA) has been conducting consultative workshops in the development of the next ten-year National OHS Strategy.  SafetyAtWorkBlog reported previously on the Melbourne meeting.  SWA has released their report into that Melbourne meeting.

The meeting had a set of criteria for the stakeholders to consider.  Sadly, there was no forewarning of the issues to be discussed so the workshop took some time to gain traction.  With only one day of consultation, it would have been more productive to release the agenda topics a day or two earlier.  These topics, each of which could have generated at least a half-day’s debate, are listed below

“Social/Economic/Emerging Issues in the Workforce, Business and Technology…

Hazards – Enhancing the capacity of workplaces to respond to:

  • Disease-Causing Hazards …
  • Injury-Causing Hazards …
  • Psychological Injury-Causing Hazards …

Work Health and Safety Systems – Challenges and Solutions in Safe Design and Work Systems, Skills and Training, and in Safety Leadership and Organisational Culture…..”

The report has responses to each of these topics but many of the suggestions are already known.  The lack of creativity in the suggestions is largely disappointing.  The responses to “what will success looks like in ten years” are mostly extensions of programs that are already in place or a perpetuation of the “way things are done now”.  Innovation was largely missing, perhaps due to the participants not being able to lose their own agendas.  The earlier SafetyAtWorkBlog article discussed the negative impact of the shadow of harmonisation, a term found only once in SWA’s report. Continue reading “OHS Strategy to nowhere”

Australia risks OHS ridicule in the media

The Sunday Herald-Sun ran an article that would not have been out-of-place in the English tabloid newspapers.  The article, “Safety regulations taking the fun out of schools”, indicates many of the confused lines of responsibility that English articles include.

In Victoria, the safety requirements of government schools are determined by the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD).  The OHS regulator, WorkSafe, has some influence but far less that DEECD. (The only really school-related OHS document from WorkSafe Victoria was released in 2008)

The Sunday Herald-Sun article states, in some pictures not in the online version, that the Victorian Principals Association has been told of OHS regulations that require teachers to  “put on mask, surgical gloves to apply a band-aid”.  Continue reading “Australia risks OHS ridicule in the media”

Australia releases official statistics into work-related injuries

Data released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) in early November 2011 has revealed that 18.5% of people injured at work in 2009-10 received no OHS training prior to the incident.

The basic findings of the 2009-10 data are not all new as a December 2010 media release shows but the new report, “6324.0 – Work-Related Injuries, Australia, 2009-10” does include new data on OHS training.

Most of the OHS training data is included in table 13 but other tables should not be overlooked.  Table 3 shows that of those injured in 2009-10:

“82% (522,400) had received occupational health and safety training in the job prior to their work-related injury or illness occurring…”

and that 18.5% did not.

A legitimate question is “what is meant by occupational health and safety training?”   Continue reading “Australia releases official statistics into work-related injuries”

An example of how safety can be misperceived as expensive

Today I received an email that had the intriguing heading of:

“Do you fully understand what the harmonisation laws mean to your organisation?”

As I don’t “fully understand” harmonisation and spammers don’t usually use OHS as a spam tool, I opened the email.  It was a promotion for an upcoming conference called Supply Chain and Logistics Safety 2012.  The harmonisation of Australia’s OHS was not in the title but was mentioned in the email body.

“Although some states appear to be delaying their timeline for harmonisation implementation, businesses in reality can’t afford to wait. You will not only need to meet the regulation, but devise strategies to prevent your bottom line being impacted.”

No one wants an impacted bottom line (there’s a cream for that) and my unease increased by the writer implying that the two major issues of OHS harmonisation was to comply – “to meet the regulation” – and to protect profits.   Continue reading “An example of how safety can be misperceived as expensive”

OHS reviews need to leap forward to relevance

Several times recently people have suggested that common sense is an adequate control measure for some workplace hazards.  The United Kingdom’s politicians have been talking about common sense and OHS for several months but perhaps we can apply the broad concept of commonality, implicit in the UK’s advocacy of “common sense”, to OHS information so that people and businesses feel empowered to educate themselves on how to work safety and without risks to health.

Australia’s (seemingly) derailed review of OHS legislation is based on removing red tape but a major focus of OHS reviews in England is

“…putting common sense back at the heart of Britain’s health and safety system…”

Even though reducing bureaucracy is part of the UK review, common sense is certainly the political mantra being applied to the review, being under taken by Professor Ragnar E Löfstedt for the Department of Work and Pensions, as seen by a recent speech by Prime Minister David Cameron to the Conservative Party conference, when discussing the empowerment of local councils:

“…one of the biggest things holding people back is the shadow of health and safety.  I was told recently about a school that wanted to buy a set of highlighter pens. But with the pens came a warning.  Not so fast – make sure you comply with the Control of Substances Hazardous to Health Regulations 2002.  Including plenty of fresh air and hand and eye protection.  Try highlighting in all that.”

According to an audio interview with one of the members of the Löfstedt review, Andrew Bridgen MP, the report is due to go to the Minister, Chris Grayling, at the end of October 2011.

In the interview, Bridgen states that people:

“…use health and safety as an excuse not to do things they don’t want to do.”

But the UK is struggling with what to do in response.  There has been a strong campaign by the OHS regulator, Health and Safety Executive, to tackle the “elf ‘n’ safety” myths but this will take a long concerted effort and is likely never to succeed completely.  Many in the media like reporting about seemingly silly local government and regulatory decisions.  This helps depict government as the “fun vampires“.

However the current situation in England, and its echoes in Australia, illustrates the importance of planning for the long term.   Continue reading “OHS reviews need to leap forward to relevance”

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