executives – Page 67 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Do health professionals make the best OHS leaders?

David Michaels has been nominated by President Obama as the new Assistant Secretary for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in the Department of Labor. (A brief profile of Michaels is available HERE.) A posting at a US Workers’ Compensation website links through to a discussion on the potential impacts of the Michaels’ appointment.

There are several telling quotes in the podcast. Sidney Shapiro, a law professor at Wake Forest University, says that OHS achieves more when run by someone with a health professional background.

“…I think it’s important that we know that David Michaels is a health professional. And I think OSHA’s done best when it’s had administrators from the public health community. It is, after all, a public health agency. More times than many of us would wish, it’s been headed by someone who’s been an adamant critic of OSHA and has come from industry or been an industry lawyer.”

Whether this position can be applied to regulators in other jurisdictions is an interesting question.

The Chair of the UK HSE Board, Judith Hackett, has a background in petrochemicals. The CEO of the HSE, Geoffrey Podger, has a background in the civil service, health and food safety. The chair of the Safe Work Australia Council, Tom Phillips was the former CEO of car manufacturer, Mitsubishi, and has served on a range of industrial company boards in South Australia. The Chair of WorkSafe BC board, Roslyn Kunin, harks from human resources and the labour market. Greg Tweedly CEO of WorkSafe Victoria has a background in insurance and compensation. Nina Lyhne of WorkSafe WA comes from road safety and compensation.

This unrepresentative sample shows a mix of experience and not all from health promotion. If the list was comprehensive, it would be interesting to see if Shapiro’s comments stack up and to see how many trade union officials have moved to “the top” or will simply remain “on the board”.

The Living on Earth podcast includes the following quote from Michaels from some time ago:

“What polluters have seen is that the strategy that the tobacco industry came up with, which essentially is questioning the science, find the controversy and magnify that controversy, is very successful in slowing down public health protections. And so the scientists who used to work for the tobacco industry are now working for most major chemical companies. They don’t have to show a chemical exposure is safe. All they have to do is show that the other studies are in question somehow. And by raising that level of uncertainty, they throw essentially a monkey wrench into the system.”

This statement could generate optimism for OSHA’s future but there are many examples of the views of environmentalists changing once they move into the corporate world. Politicians like Australia’s Minister for the Environment, Peter Garrett, is an obvious recent Australian example. Harry Butler in the 1970s was roundly criticised for “selling out” to the petrochemical industry.

However, the appointment of David Michaels pans out, it will be an interesting one to watch, particularly if the US Democrats can stay in power for more than Obama’s two terms.

Kevin Jones

Complacency and arrogance are the problems with mine safety in Australia

The signs are not good for the future of BHP Billiton’s safety program. At the Diggers & Dealers conference in Western Australia on 5 August 2009, Ian Ashby, the President of BHP Billiton Iron Ore expanded on his statements some months ago about the poor safety practices at the company’s Pilbara worksites.

According to one media report, Ashby has said that BHP’s safety performance was “generally showing improving trends”. He also said

“We’re looking for systems to eliminate these tragic events….. There hasn’t been any epiphany but we need to increase the intentionality and focus.”

Ashby specified two particular occupational hazards

traffic management, and
“fatigue management to prevent excess working hours”.

In April 2009, Ashby identified the following safety areas as those requiring attention:

Reduce site access;
Improve contractor management;
Enhance existing strategies to prevent excess working hours;
Move rail operations from the Mine Safety and Inspection Act to the Rail Safety Act;
Enhance traffic management standards, and;
Suspend all non-essential work outside daylight hours

Ashby’s presentation to the conference is now available for download.

The concern for the future safety performance of BHP Billiton comes from Ashby statements that, according to the press report, “the root of the problem was a poor attitude towards safety in the Pilbara region.

“There is an element that I don’t like to dwell on, but there is a complacency generally in the Australian workforce and a bit of an arrogance. I think some of that is quite manifest in the Pilbara.”

Ashby must have read the comments by Warren Edney about the lack of “safety brainwashing” in relation to the Pilbara miners. [SafetyAtWorkBlog has tried to clarify Edney’s comments with his employer, Royal Bank of Scotland]

The machismo of mine workers and new mining employers may be part of the issue but, as has been pointed out before, a similar Australian company in the same industry sector in very similar geographies – Rio Tinto – does not have anywhere near the same amount of fatalities even though it draw from the same worker demographics.

The OHS issue at BHP Billiton seems to be developing into a classic study of safety versus production.

It may be useful to note the report in the business section of The Age newspaper entitled “China taking all the ore we can ship: BHP“, a report generated from the same presentation by Ian Ashby at Diggers & Dealers’.

Kevin Jones

Maintain instead of repair

Every country has its share of high-fliers who “burn out”. Many fade away from the public eye with their careers over. Frequently this path to wealth and prominence is not perceived as a workplace health or safety matter. Some people decide that the health trade-off of multi-million dollar salaries is worth it.

Sadly the psychological reality of this personal decision is often masked by clichés. Frequently, executives say that a major motivation for their decision is “to spend more time with my family”. Many executives may believe this to be a major part of their decision, but regrettably, this worthy sentiment has become a cliché – the equivalent of a beauty pageant winner working toward “world peace”.

The family-time phrase/reason/excuse signifies an important element of the executive’s personality. They were willing to sacrifice decades of their relationship with their partner and to be absent from the development of their children for money.

If any of these departing executives use the family-time phrase in the same departure speech or media exit-interview as regaining “control of their lives” to “re-engage with the most important people in my life”, ask the executives, or politicians, “how do you justify ignoring your family over your career?”.

In some cases one could be more specific. “Do you think that your multi-million career was related to your daughter’s persistent attempts to kill herself?” “After being absent so frequently and for so long, are you still justified in describing your marriage as a loving relationship, or your partner as your ‘soulmate’?” “Was your million-dollar salary really worth it?”

Int he wake of the self-generated corporate financial crisis, some corporate executives are re-examining their ethics and morality. Not enough are going through this but it’s a start. Most say they operate for the benefit of shareholders but they cannot deny the reality of massive remuneration for their efforts. What they are ignoring is the individual cost to their loved ones of these efforts.

Should we look up to the billionaires who sacrifice the wellbeing of others they say they love to chase the dollar? Are these the paragons of our society?

People are trying to maintain or establish a work/life balance. (There are several articles at SafetyAtWorkBlog that report on this movement.) But the reality is that to achieve a work/life balance, one must be prepared to sacrifice income. This may involve the necessity of achieving a certain stage in one’s career that is not the top, but still a position of value in the company and, equally important, of value to one’s family and even one’s own psychological well-being. If one’s colleagues fail to understand this decision, the workplace culture is faulty, and probably irreparable.

If the ultimate ideal is to have a happy, functional, and sustainable community, one must examine one’s own motivations, and one’s own personal priorities. Everyone must consider whether we want to emulate those who sacrifice their family’s welfare for money or whether we support those who rebut the “glory of the high-achiever” and emulate those who love their family enough to spend time with them through their career. Maintenance is easier than repair in life as in safety management.

Kevin Jones

Fair Work Act and OHS

On 1 July 2009, the Australian industrial relations (IR) climate changed with the introduction of the Fair Work Act. Regardless of the politics of the new Act’s origin, this legislation changes the way that working conditions for Australians are negotiated and set.

The Fair Work Act has no relevance to occupational health and safety, so why mention this on SafetyAtWorkBlog?

The new IR legislation should reduce the conflict that has been existent in workplace negotiations. The new industrial climate is consultative and forward-looking. In fact, the government is hoping that, to some extent, this legislation reboots industrial relations (to borrow a phrase from current international diplomacy).

It is in this IR climate, and consultative structure, that OHS issues will need to be discussed and negotiated in the future.

In a webinar conducted by SmartCompany and Gadens Lawyers on 9 July 2009, the openness of the information/consultative processes was stressed by panellist, Kathryn Dent.

This positive management climate reflected that presented in an earlier seminar conducted by Douglas Workplace Lawyers. Fair Work Australia Commissioner Lewin and lawyer, Andrew Douglas, spoke about how the new IR system is more inclusive than the previous WorkChoices systems. However, they also admitted that the Fair Work Act has nebulous support documentation and information.

The level of prescription is much less than previous. This allows for less restrictive negotiation but it also means that clarity may rely on determinations made by the tribunal. Commissioner Lewin concurred with Andrew Douglas’ point that the operations of the Fair Work system will require several years of “settling in” and some adjustments depending on determinations.

When raising OHS issues for the next year or so in Australia, employees and professionals need to be reminded that many of the managers and employers with whom they are dealing may well be feeling swamped by new industrial relations processes. This distraction may be understandable but OHS obligations remain the same regardless of other management issues.

OHS may seem to be more messy during this period as the IR overlaps with the “safe systems of work”. Unless IR is already part of the responsibilities of an OHS professional, the advice is to keep away from the details of the Fair Work Act. However it is recommended that at least one seminar on the Fair Work Act be attended so that the “tone” of the new legislation is understood. More important is how the Act is to be applied within the workplaces of one’s clients or employer.

Safety management systems will need to be tweaked to fit with the new consultative aims and processes. Of course, they will need to be tweaked again once the harmonised national OHS legislation comes begins in 2010. Don’t expect stability in Australian workplaces for the next couple of years.

Kevin Jones

More workplace stressors, email and upwards bullying

According to a paper presented at the latest Industrial & Organisational Psychology Conference organised by the Australian Psychological Society, poor quality emails are causing almost as much stress in the workplace as the number received.

New Zealand provisional (?) psychologist, Rowena Brown, was presenting findings from her PhD studies and said

“Email is a double-edged sword. We know that email can help employees to feel engaged with and connected to their work colleagues, however the impact of a poor quality email, combined with the expectation to respond immediately, can create unnecessary stress. Our research raises important issues for employers, who have a responsibility to train their staff in appropriate email etiquette.”

This type of research really doesn’t help business and managers to deal with the stress of their employees because it doesn’t provide any useful control measures. There are more significant causes of stress that demand the attention of OHS professionals and managers.

The same conference illustrates one of those other stressors. Sara Branch, a psychologist Griffith University was quoted on the matter of employees bullying their bosses.

“Upwards bullying, like other forms of workplace bullying, is often more subtle and less obvious to other staff. However, it can also include more aggressive behaviours such as yelling, verbal threats, and confrontational phone conversations.”

“Workplaces need to understand that bullying can occur at any level in an organisation. Although managers clearly have formal authority, they can also be victims of bullying and need just as much support as other staff.”

The study also found, according to a media release about the conference, that one of the main triggers for upwards bullying is organisational change.

“If an employee is disgruntled by change, such as new working conditions, management, or processes, they may blame their manager and respond by bullying them.”

With the increased attention to psychosocial hazards in the occupational health and safety profession, it is necessary to pay attention to these sorts of studies but they are simply new perspectives on established issues that should already be monitored and changed.

These studies may illustrate the issue that OHS professionals can use to gain that managerial or client attention but they should be handled carefully so that these specific issues do not dominate the understanding on the manager or client.

SafetyAtWorkBlog advocates looking outside the OHS discipline for new evidence and understandings of workplace issues be it sociology or psychology but one must avoid reacting to hype.

Kevin Jones

BHP, swine flu and leave entitlements

Many OHS professionals and business gurus state that safety leadership must come from the top of the corporate tree. BHP Billiton received some rare positive press on 16 June 2009 concerning its OHS policies.

According to Mark Hawthorne, BHP CEO Marius Kloppers has revealed he is battling “pig flu”, in his words. This seems to have generated a flurry of OHS activity. Sadly the best OHS practice was not mentioned, which would be to send the infected CEO home.

Hawthorne’s article identifies several BHP swine flu actions:

non-essential trips have been cancelled;

executives who must fly are being provided with Tamiflu;

cleaning shifts have been increased;

telephones, keyboards, rest rooms and public areas are being disinfected more regularly; and

bottles of alcohol-based hand sanitisers have appeared.

SafetyAtWorkBlog is seeking clarification from BHP Billiton on a number of points.

It is hoped that these measures were not generated only by the CEO comments but were already in place, particularly, following previous incidents with SARS and even avian influenza.

Any measures should be supported by staff consultation that involves more than a notice on the board or an email in the intranet. Many of these measures generate as many questions as they hope to answer and there should be information sessions for those who wish more detail.

Indeed one of the basic employment issues that always comes up in discussions about pandemics is leave entitlements. The importance of brainstorming pandemic planning can be illustrated by an article in The Australian, also on 16 June 2009. The ACTU believes that unpaid leave should not be applied if a worker needs to be absent from work due to influenza, even if the worker themselves are not ill.

The ACTU has told SafetyAtWorkBlog that the following motion was passed at last week’s ACTU Congress

that Federal and State governments should bring together peak union and employer groups to establish guidelines for handling the pandemic. These would:

ensure workers and their families are not financially disadvantaged by the outbreak;

provide employers with useful information and procedures to deal with any suspected cases of swine flu in the workplace;

ensure persons who are in isolation as a consequence of swine flu are not discriminated against or disadvantaged in their employment; and,

educate the community about the disease to stop misinformation, panic and help in the overall strategy to slow down the spread of the disease during the winter months.

One of the criticisms that SafetyAtWorkBlog has expressed about many influenza advice sites is that control of the hazard at work is not being seen in the context of occupational health and safety. This was the case with www.fluthreat.com.

Sadly, influenza information from OHS regulators is of dubious value and application, in many instances, and the regulators have not been promoting their advice. Very little OHS traction has been gained on the pandemic, even when the unions make the point to the media, as the ACTU did with The Australian newspaper. The Australian’s article did not mention the following, and sensible, ACTU advice:

“Employers owe a duty of care to workers to provide healthy and safe workplaces as far as reasonably forseeable(sic) [and] the swine flu outbreak has been highly publicised and is reasonably forseeable.”

Let’s hope that the BHP Billiton control measures are part of an integrated OHS/pandemic plan and not a reflex action to please the boss.

Kevin Jones

Not another Australian swine flu website!?

Recently in 2009, the Health Services Australia company launched a new swine flu website.

The HSA site is run by a private health services company and came to the attention of SafetyAtWorkBlog through a news item by the OHS Commissioner of the Australian Capital Territory. The ACT OHS Commissioner may not be endorsing the site but the HSA website is described positively. The Commissioner’s site says

“The site provides information on the risk of flu – pandemic, swine, avian and seasonal varieties – expanding upon information previously published on their avian influenza site.

It also includes the latest health alerts, FAQs, useful links and information on travel health services relating to flu which people may find of benefit.”

For further information on www.fluthreat.com.au SafetyAtWorkBlog followed the trail from fluthreat to HSA which then lead to the site of one of Australia’s largest private health insurers, Medibank Private. The two companies merged only recentlyon 1 April 2009.

Health Services Australia is listed on the fluthreat site as the copyright holder but Medibank Private is not mentioned.

The HSA site which includes a prominent link to www.fluthreat.com.au does mention Medibank Private, in a mediarelease link on the home page but more succinctly, but almost in passing, under Governance and Structure:

“Health Services Australia Limited (HSA) and its subsidiaries are owned by Medibank Private Limited (Medibank).”

It seems very odd that the ACT OHS Commissioner should be directing Internet visitors to a privately run influenza information website instead of to the influenza information from authoritative websites such as the Australian Department of Health and Ageing, the ACT Dept of Health, the Federal Government’s dedicated swine flu site – healthemergency, or even the the World Health Organisation.

[SafetyAtWorkBlog has repeatedly tried to contact the ACT OHS Commissioner’s office but gets an answering service each time. The media spokesperson for HSA Group and Medibank Private has not yet returned calls]

Kevin Jones

Category: executives

Do health professionals make the best OHS leaders?

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Complacency and arrogance are the problems with mine safety in Australia

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Maintain instead of repair

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Fair Work Act and OHS

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More workplace stressors, email and upwards bullying

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BHP, swine flu and leave entitlements

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Not another Australian swine flu website!?

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