guidance – Page 46 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

OHS and workload – follow-up

SafetyAtWorkBlog has had a tremendous response to the article concerning Working Hours and Political Scandal. Below are some of the issues raised in some of the correspondence I have received from readers and OHS colleagues.

The Trade Union Congress Risk e-bulletin has a similar public service/mental health case which has been resolved through the Courts. The site includes links through to other media statements and reports.

Australia’s Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations has launched its work/life balance awards for 2009. The information available on the awards is strongly slanted to a work/family balance which is very different from work/life and excludes employees making decisions for the benefit of their own mental health – a proper work/life balance which is the philosophical basis underpinning OHS legislation. SafetyAtWorkBlog is investigating these awards with DEEWR.

SafeWork in South Australia is working on a code of practice on working hours and has been providing OHS advice on this matter since 2000.

The WA government has had a draft code on working hours for some time.

A legal reader has pointed out that “the 38 hour week issue is not set in stone …[and] is not a maximum for non-award employees.” So expect more industrial relations discussion on that issue over the next two years.

One reader generalised from the Grech case about decision-making at senior levels, a concern echoed by many others.

“The Grech case illustrates the gradual disintegration of effectiveness, and the employee’s own inability to recognise that it is not a personal failing of efficiency, rather an unrecognised systemic risk.

When the employee is at senior level, there is more likelihood there will be poor attention to the warning signs. Any ‘underperformance’ would be seen as a personal failing. For those of us in the safety business, it is obvious that the system itself is in need of urgent risk management.”

There were congratulations from many readers for raising a significant and hidden OHS issue.

“Many people in industry work more than 70 hour a week. This affects their health and personal relationships.”

“Overwork and under-resourcing lead to poor decision making, adverse business outcomes, and in the long term psychological and physical ill health. Both the government and corporate sectors are paying little attention to this issue.”

The workplace hazards resulting from fatigue are being addressed in several industries such as transport, mining and forestry, where attentiveness is hugely important because of the catastrophic consequences of poor judgement.

One of the issues from the Grech case is that the quality of judgement in non-critical, or administrative, occupations can be severely affected by fatigue, mental health and other psychosocial issues. These may not affect the health and well-being of others but can have a significant effect on the individual. OHS does not only deal with systemic or workplace cultural elements but is equally relevant to the individual worker.

Kevin Jones

[Thanks to all those who have written to me and continue to do so. KJ]

Handling trauma

The Rural Health Education Foundation (RHEF) produced a DVD recently as part of its professional development program on managing trauma. It is an introduction for rural medical practitioners on how to identify trauma and how to advise on management. The video was produced in conjunction with the Australian Centre for Posttraumatic Mental Health and is unavailable at the moment due to a lack of funding. However, the video, and others, are available online through a free registration at the RHEF website.

Health and safety practitioners rarely prepare themselves adequately for handling a traumatized worker whether it is from a work experience or an issue outside the workplace. OHS practitioners often have a linear perspective where an incident occurs, the personal damage is handled or referred on and the avoidance of recurrence is prevented.

The cycle of incident, rehabilitation and reintegration to the workplace is not widely understood in the OHS field. The “Recovery From Trauma: What Works” video illustrates the personal and psychological cost of an incident. Through a case study it also shows the early signs of trauma, when a worker may “not be himself” – the clues to a possible bigger problem. One case study, John, specifically includes the impact of his situation on his work performance.

In the early stages of trauma, around a week after an incident, the video advises that people avoid

Alcohol and drugs
Keeping overly busy
Involvement in stressful situations
Withdrawing
Stopping yourself doing things you enjoy
Taking risks

If the worker is out of sorts for longer than a week, professional assistance should be sought.

The video was broadcast in February 2009 so the information is current.

The program continues with issues of post-traumatic stress disorder with additional case studies including a policeman talking about his counseling and the therapy he undertook after a traumatic event.

RHEF does not try to do everything by itself and draws upon subject matter experts on trauma and recovery. The video is a very professional production and RHEF should be supported in its initiatives. Readers are encouraged to watch the videos online and, if you can, consider supporting RHEF financially so that these important resources can be made available to medical professionals throughout Australia.

Kevin Jones

Forest not required – indoor air quality and plants

Ever since modern offices have relied on air conditioning for ventilation, indoor air quality has been a contentious occupational issue from other people’s smells to thermal comfort to photocopier toner dust.

The prominence of air quality in offices as an OHS issue can be illustrated by a paragraph from the 1997 edition of Officewise when cigarette smoke remained a real hazard. No mention was made of plants.

Air in offices may be contaminated by several different

sources, including odours and micro-biological and

chemical contaminants. In an office environment, the

quality of the air is often controlled through an air

conditioning system. A building’s air conditioning

system may be considered as its lungs. The function

of such a system is to draw in outside air, filter, heat,

cool or humidify it and circulate it around the building.

The system expels a portion of the air to the outside

environment and replaces this expelled portion with

fresh or outside air.

“Air in offices may be contaminated by several different sources, including odours and micro-biological and chemical contaminants. In an office environment, the quality of the air is often controlled through an air conditioning system. A building’s air conditioning system may be considered as its lungs. The function of such a system is to draw in outside air, filter, heat, cool or humidify it and circulate it around the building. The system expels a portion of the air to the outside environment and replaces this expelled portion with fresh or outside air.”

Continue reading “Forest not required – indoor air quality and plants”

John Merritt and ‘reasonably practicable’

On 4 August 2009, John Merritt, Executive Director of WorkSafe Victoria, spoke at an OHS function hosted by the Australian Human Resources Institute in Melbourne. John is a lively speaker whose passion for workplace safety is obvious. I had the opportunity to ask the following question

“How is reasonably practicable NOT a ‘get-out-jail-free card’?”

Many readers will know that I am skeptical about “reasonably practicable” as is evident from the question. However John’s response was the first from a non-lawyer that saw some positives in the concept. John said

“I do think [the concept] is a real strength in the law. In trying to move people to embrace this issue, for those who are in that denial phase, they often think we are asking them to do the impossible, and I find it really useful to say “no we’re not. We’re asking you to do that which is reasonably practicable.

Our job, if we say what you’re doing is not reasonably practicable, all we have to do is go and find someone who is just like you who is doing it. We’re not asking you to do anything that somebody else, and usually in some critical mass of numbers, isn’t already doing, so why can’t you do it?” And I think that’s a reasonably sophisticated law.

You’ve got to have really good teams of investigators and lawyers and inspectors and all that sort of stuff to make that sort of law work. But that’s good, that’s doable …. but I do think, in our field, its a reasonable proposition.

The alternative, which is an absolute duty – you must have a safe workplace and if someone is hurt, prima facie, you’ve failed and you need to prove to us that you’re innocent – can be made to work as well and most of the research is …. but in trying to move that hearts and minds of, particularly, our target audience, I think it’s the right way to go.”

It was refreshing to hear that “reasonably practicable” can be used as a tool for good instead of evil through illustrating an example of a control measure that has already been found to be reasonably practicable. Tangible examples have been missing from OHS in Australia for a long time, ever since the OHS Solutions databases fell over in the 1990s.

If WorkSafe finds such examples useful for businesses, it would be good to see such databases resurrected. The images below show some pages from “Share Solutions” a hard copy database produced by WorkSafe’s predecessor, the Occupational Health and Safety Authority, in the late 1980’s. It would be a good idea if someone like Safe Work Australia investigated the feasability of resurrecting this initiative.

Kevin Jones

Leadership, stress and performance reviews – interview

Graham Winter is an Australian psychologist who was the chief psychologist for the Australian Olympic team and is now an author and business adviser. In August 2009 he has a book released entitled “The Man Who Cured the Performance Review”.

SafetyAtWorkBlog managed to interview Graham last week about the book, stress and safety leadership. The SafetyAtWorkBlog podcast is available for download.

SafetyAtWorkBlog Graham Winter Interview

Kevin Jones

OHS harmonisation – chemicals draft

As part of the Australian government’s program of national OHS harmonisation, Safe Work Australia has released “Proposed revisions to the workplace chemicals regulatory framework“. This has been a long time coming.

This is not yet open for public comment but is a great indication of what Australian workplaces that handle chemicals may be in for. Not being experts in dangerous goods, SafetyAtWorkBlog will let the document speak for itself.

“This National Standard marks a significant change in the approach to the classification and communication of chemical hazards in the workplace. The National Standard adopts the principles of the Globally Harmonised System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS) published by the United Nations. The adoption of the GHS in the workplace chemicals framework serves two important purposes:

it represents best practice in the classification of chemicals and the communication of hazards using a standardised approach that will allow harmonisation amongst international trading partners; and

it allows the promulgation of a streamlined framework for identifying, assessing and controlling chemical hazards in the workplace, where hazards may be related to health or physical effects.

The previous national framework for managing chemical hazards in the workplace was based on a distinction between hazardous substances and dangerous goods. Hazardous substances were associated with human health effects (for example acute toxicity or carcinogenicity) and dangerous goods were predominantly associated with physical effects (for example corrosivity, flammability). In many cases, a single chemical would be classified as both a dangerous goods and a hazardous substance, triggering the need to comply with two distinct regulatory frameworks.

This National Standard provides a consolidated basis for the control of health hazards and physical hazards arising from the presence of chemicals in the workplace. In this framework chemical substances, mixtures and articles can be classified as “hazardous chemicals”― a term that includes both health hazards and physical hazards.”

From a brief look, it is noted that MSDS loses a letter to become SDS, Safety Data Sheets. The principal reference codes and guidelines such as those below are now being reviewed and the public comment period began on 31 July 2009.

Approved Criteria for Classifying Hazardous Chemicals.
National Code of Practice for the Labelling of Workplace Hazardous Chemicals
National Code of Practice for the Preparation of Safety Data Sheets
National Standard for the Synthetic Mineral Fibres
National Standard for the Control of Inorganic Lead at Work

Because Australia will follow the guidelines of the Globally Harmonised System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals, the issue of environmental impact of work-related chemicals will also become relevant. The proposal says

“A full implementation of the GHS would require the provision of appropriate information on labels and safety data sheets (SDS) where a chemical is classified as an environmental hazard.”

All of this sounds like a big shake-up for many Australian businesses and safety advisers but there is still time for the government and Safe Work Australia to provide enough information to minimise its impact. The release of the proposed revisions prior to public comment is a positive sign.

Kevin Jones

Occupational violence in fast food restaurants and petrol stations

The Australian media has been abuzz over the last couple of days on several issues concerning violence. Attention increases whenever there is video involved and the latest film of a bashing in Melbourne in a Hungry Jack’s store in the early hours of 13 July 2009 is getting a considerable run.

Most commentators are taking the bashing of 19-year-old Luke Adams as an example of “street violence”. SafetyAtWorkBlog believes that the fact that this event occurred between customers in a workplace, raises questions about the obligations of retail store owners towards health and safety.

The case of Luke Adams again illustrates the reality that surveillance cameras can assist in the apprehension of criminals but does little to reduce the harm to employees and customers. This seems to be contrary to the OHS principles in Australian OHS legislation.

SafetyAtWorkBlog would ask any retailers who choose to operate, particularly, during nighttime

Are the stores designed to reduce (hopefully eliminate) the risk of violent contact between customers and staff?
Are there restrictions on the age or gender of staff who work nightshift?
Is the first aid training provided to staff designed to accommodate the emergency treatment of severely injured customers?
Has the presence of a security guard been tried during nightshifts?
Would the company consider closing a store if the risks to staff and customers became unacceptable?

SafetyAtWorkBlog knows of at least one fast food restaurant in Melbourne that removed its public toilets because of the number of drug overdoses that occurred in the cubicles. This store eventually closed its 24-hour store, partly, because of the unacceptable risk that developed.

The unfortunate linking of fast food restaurants with violent attacks is an issue of all-night trading as much as any other reason. It was just over two weeks ago that a fight in the grounds of a Hungry Jacks restaurant in suburban Melbourne was reported and wrapped into the current topic of supposedly racist-based attacks against Indian students.

The attacks are not limited to Melbourne though. A 19-year-old Korean student, Lee Joon–yub, was killed in Sydney in 2008 after being stabbed at a fast-food restaurant

The risk of occupational violence, as it is more traditionally understood, is increasing according to findings released on 16 July 2009 by the Australian Institute of Criminology. Its report, which also received some media attention from radio, finds that

“The incidence of service station armed robbery has steadily increased over the past decade. ….. This opportunistic targeting of service stations has been attributed to their extended opening hours, their sale of cigarettes and other exchangeable goods, their high volume of cash transactions and their isolation from other businesses. Widespread adoption of crime prevention measures by service stations, such as transfer trays, could help reduce their risk of being robbed…..”

The full report is worth reading closely from an OHS perspective as it identifies the characteristics of services stations (and maybe other all-night retail outlets) that are attractive to the opportunistic robber. We should not dismiss armed robberies as only involving monetary loss to retailers as the study showed that “one-third of armed robbery victims…were individual”.

The AIC report also states that

“…minimal staffing on night shift is seen to increase the risk of armed robbery victimization for service stations.”

This brings in all the OHS advice and research concerning working alone or in isolation. However there must be some sympathy for employers trying to recruit night shift workers for industries where violence is an increasing risk.

The mention of the hazard control measure of transfer trays is gratifying as it fits with a higher order of control measure in OHS parlance by providing an engineering control. However this needs to be backed up by specific training for employees on what to do when required to render assistance outside the enclosed booth.

The application of transfer trays may be valid for fast food stores at nighttime by only offering a drive-thru service and further reducing the risk of customer violence against employees.

Regardless of the physical harm from work tasks arising from working in retail, WorkSafe Victoria advises of four control measures for what it describes as the psychological system of stress, bullying and harassment:

Your workplace culture and management should encourage open and effective communication.

Develop, implement and enforce clear policies and procedures that address bullying, occupational violence, harassment and work pressure in consultation with workers (including young workers) and management.

Where money is handled, put in place security measures to reduce the risk of occupational violence.

Training and procedures should include all staff at risk, including any casual or on hire workers.

Kevin Jones

Category: guidance

OHS and workload – follow-up

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Handling trauma

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Forest not required – indoor air quality and plants

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John Merritt and ‘reasonably practicable’

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Leadership, stress and performance reviews – interview

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OHS harmonisation – chemicals draft

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Occupational violence in fast food restaurants and petrol stations

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