Category: government

OHS Honour missed but well-deserved

Following the SafetyAtWorkBlog article about the 2012 Queen’s Birthday Honours, a reader has brought a well-deserved OHS recipient to our attention that we, and many others, missed.

Ian Ewart received the medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) for his services to his local community in Traralgon however I knew Ian through his involvement with the Gippsland OHS Network, a safety group in a regional part of Victoria renown for its electricity generation.  His creation of that network was an important part of his nomination.

Very little more information has appeared in the official Honours websites and notifications but a colleague of Ian’s has provided the extract from his nomination:

“Ian’s employment in the safety industry began in 1979 when he was appointed as a training officer by the National Safety Council of Australia. Various safety roles followed until his retirement from full-time employment in June 2009. Not content to retire, Ian then established an OH&S consultancy business to continue to service those who wished to retain his expertise. Continue reading “OHS Honour missed but well-deserved”

Workplace bullying in the police force illustrates the challenges of change management

There are two newspaper reports in Australia on 21 June 2012 about the Victorian Police Force that illustrate a fractious safety culture and a major organisational and ideological impediment to reducing workplace bullying.

The Australian article ” OPI concedes failure against force’s culture” (only available to subscribers) states that:

‘The Office of Police Integrity has conceded it and other corruption fighting measures have failed to root out the entrenched culture of reprisals and mateship in pockets of the Victoria Police that seriously harms the force….”

“The OPI says current law fails to deal with why whistleblowers are targeted. ‘‘The legislated protections against retaliation do not address the root cause of reprisal — a workplace culture of misguided loyalty,’’ it argues.  “The protections are individualistic and short-term, tending to ‘look after’ victims and potential victims of reprisal rather than address why reprisal occurs.’’

“Despite the subsequent formation of the OPI and the beefing up of the Ombudsman’s powers, police still struggled to break free of the shackles of loyalty and the so-called brotherhood.’

The Age article, “A fifth of police bullied at work“, reports on a government survey circulated to 14,000 people.

‘The figures, provided to The Age, mean about 1250 of the 4200 police staff who completed the survey have seen bullying behaviour, while nearly 900 say they have been bullied.’ Continue reading “Workplace bullying in the police force illustrates the challenges of change management”

Through Wilful Blindness I begin to see

Put your hand over your ears and start saying La La La La La La La.  That is willful blindness (or, technically,deafness, but let’s not quibble).

Margaret Heffernan, author of a new paperback edition of  “Wilful Blindness  – Why we ignore the obvious at our peril“, discovered wilful blindness while researching the trial of the Enron executives.  Heffernan says that

“Judge [Simeon] Lake was applying the legal principle of wilful blindness: you are responsible if you could have known, and should have known, something which instead you strove not to see.” (page 1)

Heffernan’s book is not simply a new book on business management. Heffernan acknowledges that wilful blindness is not limited to a workplace, person or management theory.  She also says wilful blindness is not always a negative.  It is this breadth of approach to the topic that increases the worthiness of her book. Continue reading “Through Wilful Blindness I begin to see”

OHS inspections save businesses money

A recent article in Science about OHS inspections has gained considerable attention after Michael Blanding wrote about the findings in a Harvard Business School blog. According to the executive summary:

“In a natural field experiment, researchers [ Associate Professor Michael W. Toffel and colleague David I. Levine] found that companies subject to random OSHA inspections showed a 9.4 percent decrease in injury rates compared with uninspected firms.

The researchers found no evidence of any cost to inspected companies complying with regulations. Rather, the decrease in injuries led to a 26 percent reduction in costs from medical expenses and lost wages translating to an average of $350,000 per company.

The findings strongly indicate that OSHA regulations actually save businesses money.”

That research should give enormous heart to OHS regulators around the world and reduce criticism from business groups. The findings have been defined as “definitive” but this is like saying that research into Scandinavian workplaces and society can be relevant to other countries. Research in OHS and workers compensation in the United States is relevant to the United States with mostly curiosity value to other nations. Continue reading “OHS inspections save businesses money”

FindTheBest seriously misjudges on its data services for workplace deaths and injuries

Many organisations are beginning to assess their performance in occupational health and safety (OHS), mostly through spreadsheet graphics and lead and lag indicators.  These “databases” provide comparisons of activity with the hope of showing positive progress on safety.  FindTheBest.com has been building comparison websites for some time and has applied their mystical Web2.0 algorithms to workplace safety data from the United States in its FindTheData website.  It has several sites that may be of interest to OHS professionals – Work Injuries and Death and Dangerous Jobs.

Dangerous Jobs allows you to select the occupational categories you are interested in and then compare their statistical data.  For instance, comparing Farmers and Ranchers to Structural Steel Workers shows an annual fatality rate of 39.7 to 30.3 based on hours, respectively.  These comparisons are based on data from the United States Department of Labor statistics.  But the question on the comparison is so what?  What benefit can be gained by comparing these two sets of data?  None, as far as I can see.

The glossary for Dangerous Jobs lists the top couple of popular comparisons as

  • Top 7 Most Dangerous Jobs in US
  • Police and sheriff’s patrol officers vs. Electricians

The first has curiosity value but the second is reminiscent of the adolescent (or drunk) speculation on who would win in a fight between Darth Vader and Gigantor?  Pointless speculation that sounds like it could result in some interesting information.  Just maybe.  Perhaps. Continue reading “FindTheBest seriously misjudges on its data services for workplace deaths and injuries”

SafeWorkSA executive receives Queen’s Birthday honour

Every year I look through the Queen’s Birthday Honours list in Australia, looking for somebody who has been awarded an honour for services to occupational health and safety.  Almost every year, there is nothing but in 2012 one person was awarded a Public Service Medal “for outstanding public service in the area of occupational health and safely.”

This year, Michele Patterson, Executive Director of SafeWork SA was awarded the Public Service Medal.  There is an outline of the justification for the award online  (at page 389).

Congratulations.

Kevin Jones

Brodie’s Law not being applied. Perhaps a broader context is needed.

Workplace bullying is a hazard that must be recognized, addressed and punished, but above all prevented. “Brodie’s Law” was always going to be a part of this challenge but never the solution.

Today’s Age newspaper bemoans the fact that “Brodie’s Law” has not been applied since its introduction 12 months ago.  This is not surprising and the article provides some clues to why.

The application of this law seems now to be mainly intended for the Victorian Police force and, as with any police force, there are a great many items on their agenda of which workplace bullying is only one.

Policing and harm prevention

It can also be asked why the Victorian Police force is policing a workplace issue?  Workplace safety is principally the responsibility of the employer or, in the new language, person conducting a business or undertaking.  The bullies and employer involved in the bullying of Brodie Panlock were prosecuted under occupational health and safety law, not the Crimes Act. Continue reading “Brodie’s Law not being applied. Perhaps a broader context is needed.”

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