executives – Page 49 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Election excitement masks OHS confusion

The Liberal Party of New South Wales won last Saturday’s State election in a landslide. The New South Wales employer associations are jubilant but the jubilation masks some confusion over OHS reforms.

The new NSW government is being urged to act promptly on OHS reform issues particularly by the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) and the NSW Business Council but the media statement of the AICD illustrates the confused understanding of the national OHS reforms. It says

“Reforms should include reducing the burden on business of excessive regulation, re-committing NSW to participate in the national reform of occupational health and safety laws and reducing the excessive liability burden imposed on company directors by state legislation.”

“The new government must move decisively in its first term to reduce unnecessary regulation and red tape, which is strangling business.”

It is acknowledged that the introduction of new OHS laws will substantially increase the need for paperwork in order to produce the evidence required to support compliance, due diligence and positive OHS duties on managers. It seems impossible to achieve OHS reforms with also accepting the increased documentation. Continue reading “Election excitement masks OHS confusion”

Rotting fish, safety leadership and wizards

In business, government and public authorities, CEOs and executives regularly resign during periods of controversy. Within the 24 hours of each other in 2010 two prominent Australian executives resigned – Brian Waldron and Russell Rees. Waldron because the rugby league team, Melbourne Storm, his previous CEO appointment, was found to have operated unethically during his time at the top. Rees resigned because, he said it is the right time to leave, however there had been serious questions put in a Royal Commission about his handling of the events in Black Saturday bushfires when over 170 people died.

The dominant mantra in occupational safety management is that safety cannot be improved without leadership from the executives. Australian safety conferences are laden with mentions of leadership. Leaders have the potential to inspire, although some stay on for too long.

The leadership sellers in the corporate marketplace (some not dissimilar to wizards) are all pushing the positive benefits of leadership. But there are good leaders and bad leaders. There are inspirational leaders and there are selfish leaders. There are those executives who lead in positive directions and there are those who lead organisations and others astray. There are some people who are not suited to being leaders at all. Continue reading “Rotting fish, safety leadership and wizards”

Australian Football’s corporate approach to OHS

Recently the CEO of the Australian Football League (AFL), Andrew Demetriou addressed a breakfast gathering in Melbourne on the issue of “OHS in the AFL”. He spoke almost entirely about policy initiatives without specifically addressing occupational health and safety but after a while we came to understand he was speaking of OHS from his senior executive perspective rather than the level where traditional control measures are implemented.

This was a legitimate approach to OHS but one that is rarely heard, perhaps because the AFL is a unique sporting body. There was no mention of concepts dear to the hearts of CEOs such as Zero Harm or Safety Culture. In fact there was hardly even a mention of Leadership.

Continue reading “Australian Football’s corporate approach to OHS”

Is politics anti-family?

Another Australian politician has resigned to spend more time with his family but this time the family mantra is not tacked on to a struggling career in order to add moral weight to the political decision sadly many examples of dubious resignations are available. Most commentators believe that the Tasmanian Premier, David Bartlett’s decision is a genuine desire to spend more time with his young family.

Bartlett image - December 2010 — Premier David Bartlett talking to workers at the McKay Timbers.

Most of the media coverage relates to the political context of Bartlett’s decision but the circumstances for the decision are not unique as some previous SafetyAtWorkBlog articles show. Political careers can lead to suicide attempts, depression and mental breakdown. Certainly this occurs in other professions but at some point the structure of the occupation needs reviewing if a work/life balance is to be achieved.

Politics has always been a time vampire that has required the welfare and development of children to be given a lower priority than public service. Continue reading “Is politics anti-family?”

Is capitalism anti-safety? Systemic failures in oil industry

The Wall Street Journal and other media around the world have reported on systemic failures of the global oil industry and government regulators identified by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling. These articles are based on the release of a single chapter, Chapter 4, of the final report due for release on 11 January 2011.

A media release from the Commission includes the following findings from Chapter 4

“The well blew out because a number of separate risk factors, oversights, and outright mistakes combined to overwhelm the safeguards meant to prevent just such an event from happening. But most of the mistakes and oversights at Macondo can be traced back to a single overarching failure—a failure of management. Better management by BP, Halliburton, and Transocean would almost certainly have prevented the blowout by improving the ability of individuals involved to identify the risks they faced, and to properly evaluate, communicate, and address them.”

“. . .the Macondo blowout was the product of several individual missteps and oversights by BP, Halliburton, and Transocean, which government regulators lacked the authority, the necessary resources, and the technical expertise to prevent.”

“The blowout was not the product of a series of aberrational decisions made by rogue industry or government officials that could not have been anticipated or expected to occur again. Rather, the root causes are systemic and, absent significant reform in both industry practices and government policies, might well recur.”

“What we. . .know is considerable and significant:

each of the mistakes made on the rig and onshore by industry and government increased the risk of a well blowout;

the cumulative risk that resulted from these decisions and actions was both unreasonably large and avoidable; and

the risk of a catastrophic blowout was ultimately realized on April 20 and several of the mistakes were contributing causes of the blowout.”

The significance of these quotes is that the Commission is critical of an industry and not just a single company. Continue reading

New public sector bullying guideline

In late-December 2010, the State Services Authority issued a new OHS/HR publication entitled “Tackling Bullying“. The guide is aimed squarely at the public sector but should be of interest for any organisation that has a large number of office-based staff.

This guide is a good example of how the OHS guidelines can be tailored to specific industries and circumstances. The “further resources” section also includes a considerable number of hyperlinks to current bullying documents.

Public servants often have a very different approach to psycho-social issues of bullying and stress because the public service is a unique work environment where considerable resources have been traditionally devoted to staff welfare. In some ways, this uniqueness can provide a level of sensitivity to OHS issues that is not reflected in other industry sectors. Continue reading “New public sector bullying guideline”

Undercover Boss is an example of executive alienation

“Undercover Boss” has become a popular television program in many countries over the last few years. The format is fresh and the results revealing. The eyes of each boss are opened to the deficiencies of a business and to the value of the workforce. Each episode ends with the reward of acknowledgement to the workers and new wisdom to the boss.

But the show is also an indictment of the attitudes of, and the management training provided, to senior executives. Why were the employees not being valued by the executives already? How did the executives lose touch?

If business management, corporate structures, and management training was rooted in the reality of work rather than profit, a series like Undercover Boss would never have been possible.

The concept of an executive maintaining a perspective of frontline customer contact is not new. Continue reading “Undercover Boss is an example of executive alienation”

Category: executives

Election excitement masks OHS confusion

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Rotting fish, safety leadership and wizards

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Australian Football’s corporate approach to OHS

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Is politics anti-family?

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Is capitalism anti-safety? Systemic failures in oil industry

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New public sector bullying guideline

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Undercover Boss is an example of executive alienation

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