Leadership – Page 50 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Safety is unlikely to improve without a transformational conversation

As the relevance of Leadership encroaches on the workplace safety discipline, so do supportive concepts and techniques such as transformational conversations. There is little doubt that such concepts are applicable to improving safety management and worker safety, even if, to some extent, these concepts are old wisdom rebranded into modern lingo. Safety conversations can, and should, be transformational but don’t think that this type of conversation is new or unique.

Transformational conversations have been integral elements of the language used by OHS consultants, and small business people, (and frauds) all the time, mostly subconsciously. By answer the phone or asking “how can I help?” you indicate that you are available to be supportive and helpful. It also throws the emphasis back on the customer/employer to be more forthcoming with information and reinforces that you are not providing/imposing solutions but helping the client to develop or refine the solutions themselves.

This is a crucial element of OHS law that the business community still struggles to appreciate. Continue reading “Safety is unlikely to improve without a transformational conversation”

John Darley’s delay on Work Health and Safety laws is unproductive

South Australia still has not passed the Work Health and Safety legislation that would bring it into line with most of the other States of Australia. A major obstacle to the Bill’s progress in the South Australian Parliament is the “dithering” of Independent MP John Darley.

On 28 June 2012, Darley spoke to the WHS Bill in the Legislative Council (page 1641). Darley reviews the status of WHS laws in Australian States, mentions Victoria’s flawed PricewaterhouseCoopers costings report but without expressing an opinion on it and acknowledges the support from major industrial and employer associations for the laws, but he seems very sympathetic to minority views on workplace safety.

Darley refers to the views of the Housing Industry (HIA) and Master Builders’ Associations (MBA) on “control”, two groups he acknowledges are “the most vocal opponents” of the Bill, and states

“Any person who does not have direct control of a risk should not have responsibility for eliminating or minimising the risk”.

Consider this position in relation to workplace psychosocial hazards. A bully would be breaching OHS laws by bullying another worker but those executives who establish the culture of a workplace that condones the bully’s actions would not be facing any penalty. This scenario seems to contradict a dominant safety principle that compliance and respect stems from the active example shown by an organisation’s leader. How will the legislative obligation for a “positive duty of care” in workplaces apply with in-direct control? Continue reading “John Darley’s delay on Work Health and Safety laws is unproductive”

Lessons for everyone in the legal action against France Telecom executives over suicides

In 2009-10, SafetyAtWorkBlog followed the unfolding and tragic story of the spate of suicides at France Telecome that were directly related to the change of work practices and organisational policies instigated after privatisation. SafetyAtWorkBlog stated that the suicides could be considered to be a case study of poor personnel management and, in more recent parlance, a failure of safety leadership. This month French authorities have begun investigating France Telecom executives.

According to an AFP report in early July 2012:

“Louis-Pierre Wenes was placed under investigation on Thursday, a day after former France Telecom chief Didier Lombard, for workplace harassment, his lawyer Frederique Beaulieu said.”

At the time of the suicides Wenes was Deputy CEO and Lombard was CEO.

Interestingly and curiously, workplace bullying is not a term used in the France Telecome situation, although it may have met the criteria that Australia applies. Continue reading “Lessons for everyone in the legal action against France Telecom executives over suicides”

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”

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”

Where can I get my own Cynthia Carroll?

The June 2012 edition of the Harvard Business Review includes a fascinating article (extract online ) on safety by the controversial CEO of Anglo American, Cynthia Carroll. The whole article is well worth reading but there was one element that I found particularly interesting, Carroll’s mention of zero harm.

Carroll visited operations in South Africa where Anglo American employed 86,000 people from various cultural background s and literacy. She writes:

“When I visited the operations, my conversations with local managers were frustrating. Safety was improving, they assured me, but it would never be perfect. My goal of zero harm was simply not achievable. The head of our platinum operations at the time insisted repeatedly, “Cynthia, you just have to understand…” As I talked to people and examined the facilities, I wondered how much authority someone who is underground for hours on end, with a shift supervisor right behind him, really has. I questioned whether a line worker had the power to put up his hand and say, “I’m not going to do this, because it is unsafe.””

Following a fatality on the day of her visit and in conjunction with the safety concerns she had, Carroll closed the Rustenburg platinum mine for a structural safety makeover. Continue reading “Where can I get my own Cynthia Carroll?”

Motivation needed from Prime Minister on OHS laws

In July 2010, Prime Minister Julia Gillard mentioned OHS harmonisation in an election debate. She said that OHS harmonisation was one of her achievements but less than two years later, at the Australian Council of Trade Union (ACTU) Congress, there is no mention of harmonisation in her speech. The only mention of safety was in terms of truck drivers:

“And we’ve moved to protect the rights of cleaners. We’ve moved to improve the laws for outworkers. We’ve moved so that a truck-driving cabin being a workplace […] can be a safer workplace, so that truck driver gets back home that evening.”

The Prime Minister audience was trade unionists and perhaps they need motivation and support and acknowledgement for their efforts in difficult economic and political times but there is a big move from harmonising the OHS laws across a country to determining a truck cabin as a workplace (which it has been for decades in some States).

The 2012 ACTU Congress included industrial manslaughter on its agenda. Its OHS and Rehabilitation policy stated:

“Congress affirms that industrial manslaughter should be an offence under occupational health and safety legislation or other legislation as most appropriate. The elements of the offence should be: A worker dies in the course of employment or at a place of work or is injured or contracts a disease, injury or illness in the course of employment and later dies; The conduct (by way of act or omission) of a person caused the death, injury or illness; and The person was reckless or negligent about causing serious harm or death to the worker.”

Industrial manslaughter seems a poisoned political concept but it remains a potential motivator in Australia even though it is a reality in the UK. Without motivation from the Prime Minister, other issues will fill the void.

Kevin Jones

Category: Leadership

Safety is unlikely to improve without a transformational conversation

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John Darley’s delay on Work Health and Safety laws is unproductive

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Lessons for everyone in the legal action against France Telecom executives over suicides

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OHS Honour missed but well-deserved

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Through Wilful Blindness I begin to see

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Where can I get my own Cynthia Carroll?

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Motivation needed from Prime Minister on OHS laws

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