The Australian media has widely reported that Australian Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, exists on three-hours sleep per night. He doesn’t and Professor Drew Dawson, a prominent Australian sleep researcher, discusses the exaggeration of high-flying professionals in an article at Crikey.com on 21 July 2009.
More research of Professor Drew Dawson, Director, Centre for Sleep Research, University of South Australia, is available online.
The issue of driving while using a mobile is a perennial issue for the media but nothing much changes. The New York Times on 20 July 2009 carried an article on the latest research which confirms many previous studies that using a mobile phone while driving increases the risk of an accident.
No US State has banned the practice because social use of mobile phones has become so widespread that any ban is impossible to enforce effectively.
In January 2009, SafetyAtWorkBlog reported on the recommendations from WorkSafe Victoria on the matter. Even in their guide they would say nothing more than
“recommend that hands free calls be kept to a minimum”.
At some point for most workplace hazards, the evidence outweighs the enforcement difficulties and bans ensue. It has happened to asbestos, it has happened with smoking, but these are decades after dancing around the most effective control measure – elimination.
The industrialised world, in particular, has been wrestling with the hazard of phones and driving for well over a decade. One report from 2002 said
“Tests carried out by scientists at the Transport Research Laboratory established that driving behaviour is impaired more by using a mobile phone than by being over the legal alcohol limit.”
The footnote to this comment said
“Previous research has shown that phone conversations while driving impair performance. It was difficult to quantify the risk of this impairment because the reference was usually made to normal driving without using a phone. “Worse than normal driving” does not necessarily mean dangerous. There was a need therefore to benchmark driving performance while using a mobile phone to a clearly dangerous level of performance. Driving with a blood alcohol level over the legal limit is an established danger.”
There are always conditions set with research findings but these are sensible and valid.
According to a 2004 report by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reported by UPI (unable to find a link)
“…estimated 8 percent of all motorists — about 1.2 million drivers — were using cell phones at any given time while driving, up from 6 percent in 2002 and 4 percent in 2000. About 800,000 of those drivers used handsets and not hands-free devices.
- Handheld cell phone use increased from 5 percent to 8 percent among drivers aged 15 to 24 between 2002 and 2004.
- Use of cellular-phone handsets increased from 4 percent to 6 percent of female drivers, while the number of men talking on handheld cell phones while driving remained constant at 4 percent.
- Motorists were more likely to use a cell phone while driving alone, but drivers with children in the vehicle were just as likely to use the phone as those without children in the car.”
For those readers who like dollar figures, the same UPI article stated
“A 2002 study by the Harvard Center for Risk Analysis, part of Harvard University’s School of Public Health, found drivers using cell phones caused 1.5 million accidents annually resulting in 2,600 deaths and 570,000 injuries.
Researchers estimated banning cell phone use in vehicles would cost $43 billion a year in lost economic activity.”
[The only HCRA report on the website is is a 2003 study – Cohen, J.T. and Graham, J.D. A revised economic analysis of restrictions on the use of cell phones while driving. Risk Analysis. 2003; 23(1):5-17.]
A September 2003 report from NIOSH lists a range of driver hazards related to work activities and is worth downloading. Pages 51-555 deal specifically with phone use.
(If any reader knows of a literature review on this topic, please contact SafetyAtWorkBlog)
This workplace hazard has been around for so long that in the opinion of SafetyAtWorkBlog, when someone is driving a work vehicle 100% of their attention should be on the principal task at hand – driving.
Achieving this realistic aim can be helped by
Above all, employees must be informed of the risks involved with distraction, must be reassured that employers will support safe actions, and must realise the affect on other drivers and their families from their own mistakes.
In 2001 the House of Lords was presented with a Dignity At Work Bill. This seemed a great idea for unifying different elements of the workplace that can contribute to psychosocial hazards. This would be a similar approach to using “impairment” to cover drugs, alcohol, fatigue and distraction. However, it never progressed.
Regular readers of SafetyAtWorkBlog would note an undercurrent of humanism in many of the articles but it is heartening to see this in other articles and blogs. Maud Purcell of Greenwich Times provides an article from early May 2009 on dignity in the workplace in a time of economic turmoil that you may find of interest and use.
It is rare for anything of great relevance to occupational health and safety to come from the annual budget statement of the Australian government. There is nothing directly relevant from the statement issued earlier this week except for the lifting of the retirement age to 67 in 2023.
Compulsory retirement age does not mean that people stop working. If that was the case, farming and the Courts would be very different organisations. The retirement age has more to do with financial independence or the pension eligibility than anything else but the government’s decision has focused the media and commentators on the fact that people will be working beyond traditional retirement age.
The announcement this week also supported the reality that has been increasing for many people for over a year now that the level of retirement income has plummeted because of the global economic recession. People have a growing financial need to work, not simply a desire.
This will change the way that worker health will be managed by companies and by the individual. Watch for even more interest in “the best companies to work for” campaigns. In fact it should not be long before someone starts marketing on the theme of “is your health up to working into your seventies?”
This morning a package of interesting statistics were presented to a breakfast seminar held by Douglas Workplace & Litigation Lawyers. One of the regular speakers, Ira Galushkin, provided the following Australian statistics
- High risk employees (5+ Risks) are at work but not productive 32.7% of the time compared to low risk employees (0-2 Risks) who are not productive 14.5% of the time.
- The productivity difference between health and unhealthy employees is therefore 18.2% or 45 days per annum.
- High risk employees average 5.1 hours/month absence versus 2.4 hours/month for low risk employees. This amounts to 32.4 hours (over 4 days) days per annum.
- Healthy employees average 1-2 sick days per annum versus 18 days for those in the lowest health and wellbeing category.
- The unhealthiest employees are productive for only about 49 hours out of each month compared to around 140 hours/month for the most healthy.
- Poor health can account for an average 5% loss in productivity across the entire Australian workforce with the unhealthiest group reporting a 13% drop in productivity. About half [of] this is related to chronic conditions such as headaches, hay fever and neck/back pain,whilst half can be accounted for by lifestyle factors such as inactivity, smoking, obesity etc
All of this information shows the importance of workers maintaining their own fitness in order to live longer, but also to be able to present a case, if necessary, about their own productivity levels and how they have been saving their employer big dollars.
If we need to be able to work till older than previously, we will want to stay in a job we enjoy and that values us. Some longterm health planning may be required by all of us.
Not so long ago, it was considered a legitimate criticism to blame the individual for “doing the wrong thing” at work. Depending on the type of worksite, this was considered “human error” or “bloody stupid”.
Fatigue is an interesting illustration of how occupational health and safety must cope with new perspectives on established hazards. Australian OHS legislation operates on a responsibility to manage the systems of work in a workplace, of which only one element is the worker.
A good incident investigation goes beyond the incident to see what led up to a worker acting the way they did, the reasons behind the decision. Instead of “tell me about your childhood”, OHS practitioners can legitimately ask “tell me about your sleep patterns”, or “tell me about your second job”, or “tell me about your relationship with your partner”, as these can be contributory factors to the decision made on the day or the work environment at the time of the incident.
Some recent AAP articles provide interesting examples of the different contexts in which fatigue as a workplace issue can manifest:
“Ambulance Employees Australia (AEA) said weary paramedics had fallen asleep at the wheel and administered wrong drugs because they did not have enough time off between shifts.
They have called for a minimum 10-hour break between shifts, compared with eight hours under the current award.
But Ambulance Victoria has said the fatigue issue was one of 175 union claims, which it said sought $800 million from pay talks.”
“Investigators examining the near-catastrophe at Melbourne Airport last month are exploring whether fatigue was a factor after being told the pilot had barely slept the day before the flight.
Emirates pilots are permitted to fly a maximum of 100 hours each 28 days and the pilot was also almost at the legal threshold of the number of hours he was able to fly.
Emirates has issued a statement saying safety was a top priority for the airline.”
A higher priority than a good night’s sleep apparently! Clearly it is the spread of hours that is the issue not the total over a fixed period.
Both these examples relate to workers’ interactions with the public and reflect the complexity of OHS’s spread to public safety.
It seems that every investigation now automatically assesses the fatigue level, or impairment, of the participants in incidents in the same way mobile phone records are checked in car accidents and blood-alcohol levels or drug testing in some industrial events.
If your OHS professional does not consider psychosocial issues in developing safety management plans or incident investigation, seek a second opinion, or better yet, make sure the first opinion is comprehensive.
Reports in the Australian media this week indicated that “nearly half the population has a common mental health problem at some point during their lives”. Safety professionals and HR practitioners should take note of these statistics and hope that it does not manifest in their shift, even though it is likely.
The difficulty with trying to manage or anticipate mental health issues is that they seem to have evolved over time and multiplied. There is the common phrase of “trying to herd cats” and it seems that mental health issues are the cats. One could apply lateral thinking and propose the solution is to get a dog but will the dog herd a cat that doesn’t look like a cat, smell like a cat, or worst scenario of all, a cat that resembles a dog!
Because of the fluctuating psychiatric states of everyone everyday how does one recognise when a mood swing becomes a mental health issue. Does one take everything as a mental health issue and waste time on frivolous matters? Or is there no such thing as a frivolous matter?
In the one article there are these confusing and inconsistent terms for mental health:
- “common mental health problem”
- “mental condition”
- “non psychotic psychiatric problems”
- “mood disorder”
- “anxiety disorder”
- “mental health disorder”
- “substance abuse or dependency”
- “mental disorder”
- “mental illness”
- “psychiatric condition”
In this report it is unlikely that the synonyms have been generated by the journalist as the data quoted is from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, but it indicates the confusion that safety professionals can feel when they need to accommodate more recent workplace hazards – the psychosocial hazards.
The list above does not include the “established” hazards of bullying, occupational violence or stress. The fact that there may be a clear differentiation between mental health symptoms and mental disorders but that needs to be clearly communicated to those who manage workplaces so that control resources can be allocated where best needed.
The article referred to above provides interesting statistics and there are gems of useful information in the ABS report but the article provides me with no clues about how to begin a coordinated program to address the mental health issues in the workplace. It is an article without hope, without clues, without pathways on which the professional can act.
There is no doubt the psychosocial hazards at work are real but the advocates of intervention need to clarify the message.
(This blog posting does not discuss the recent changes to compensation for defence personnel and soldiers for mental health from combat, but mental health in that “industry” is a fascinating comparison to what occurs in the private sector.)
Each November safety publications carry guidances and warnings about unacceptable conduct at company Christmas parties. Often these warnings are around moderating alcohol consumption and showing due respect to others. One of the most recent legal advisories was issued in late-2008 by Maria Saraceni of the Australian law firm, Deacons.
This week in Sydney the National Rugby League (NRL) faced its latest controversy when Brett Stewart of the Manly club was charged with sexual assault at a work function. The NRL today issued harsh penalties on both Stewart (five match ban) and the club ($100,000). To understand the context of the penalties and the media hoo-hah surrounding this it would be necessary to look at the many instances of assault and abuse associated with rugby league, and other male-dominated sports, in Australia.
The issue has remained largely on the sports pages of the newspapers except in New South Wales. The fact that a sporting club was involved and a sport with a sad history in this area has dominated reporting and the OHS, safety management and employer liability angle has been lost in the rush.
The NRL media statement (no direct link available), quoted in part by the ABC, shows that the NRL CEO, David Gallop, is well aware of the safety management issues.
“Brett could not have been in a more high profile position of trust for the game on the eve of a season than he was last week and we believe he should have recognized the honour that he was given and the responsibility that went with it,” NRL Chief Executive, Mr David Gallop, said today. “By any estimation there was an abuse of alcohol in the aftermath of a club function that has led in some part to the game being placed under enormous pressure.
“The players and the clubs need to know that we are not going to accept that.
“The Manly club has today delivered its report into the function and the measures simply weren’t sufficient to stop drinking getting out of hand in the case of some of the players. Brett was both refused service of alcohol and asked leave the premises.”
Section 20 (2) of the NRL Code of Conduct which states:
“Every person bound by this Code shall, whether or not he is attending an official function arranged for the NRL, the NRL Competition, the Related Competitions, Representative Matches, the ARL Competitions or a Club, conduct himself at all times in public in a sober, courteous and professional manner.”
Peter Fitzsimmons explains why the general conduct of rugby players needs changing.
“They [rugby league clubs] must fix it because they are a powerful tribe within our community, and that community has had a gutful not just of the atrocities, but of the NRL promising to fix it, to educate them, to discipline them, blah, blah, blah, year after year, with no results.”