Leadership – Page 51 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

“Do some good” sounds more effective than achieving “zero harm”

The April 2012 edition of the UK magazine Training Journal makes a statement that is so simple, safety professionals should be kicking themselves. The safety profession is trying to change the measurement of safety from lag indicators to lead, from negatives to positives, from failures to successes and yet we continue to talk about zero harm. In Training Journal, Stuart Walkley states that

“…we face a new challenge, not just to ‘do no harm’ but to ‘do some good’ in the workplace, to create a healthy working environment that supports and contributes to our wellbeing.”

“Do some good”. I would rather be a Do Some Good Manager than a Zero Harm Manager. Focussing on the safety positive is what I do as a safety adviser but saying that my job is to “do some good” makes me feel better about my job than if I was minimising the negative, which is what the zero harm descriptor does.

Also, “do some good” sits well with the new approach that safety professionals are supposed to have, having to blend the psychosocial hazards into our risk controls approach. Continue reading ““Do some good” sounds more effective than achieving “zero harm””

Safety leadership and culture require accountability

At the recent Safe Work Australia Awards, the Minister for Workplace Relations had a dig at “safety culture“, according to an article from the National Safety Council of Australia. Bill Shorten said :

“It is not the systems or the fancy talk about culture that will save people’s lives.”

This has been interpreted by some as Shorten disparaging the advocates of safety culture. I agree that safety culture can be used as a euphemism for “Act of God” and therefore take no preventative action but safety culture is not designed by Gods, it is designed and implemented by Chief Executive Officers and Boards of Directors, often under the rubric of “leadership”. Continue reading “Safety leadership and culture require accountability”

Favourable progress could be achieved on OHS if the current reality is accepted

The issue of “control” in Australian OHS law continues to be discussed as industry associations bristle against the introduction of Work Health and Safety laws, frequently on flawed or dubious costings.

Australian safety laws have been moving from the prescriptive tradition for decades. This has been due to various reasons including new workplace hazards that cannot be controlled in defined ways, diminished enforcement resources and confused roles in OHS regulators, the change in labour force dominance from blue- to white-collar occupations but, most of all, repeated demands from business associations for increased flexibility and autonomy on managing workplace safety.

Certainly the degree of control has varied from State to State with New South Wales being considered as having the most business-unfriendly OHS laws but most States are now running under a different set of OHS rules and criticizing the current laws by referring to now-repealed OHS laws in the most extreme State of New South Wales, as Ken Phillips does in today’s The Australian newspaper, is almost sophistry. Continue reading “Favourable progress could be achieved on OHS if the current reality is accepted”

Award winner illustrates a potential new approach to small business OHS support

The most interesting winner at the Safe Work Australia was a small greengrocer, The Hub Fruit Bowl. This family run business improved their occupational health and safety management system (OHSMS) with little more than a free “Small Business Safety Pack” from SafeWorkSA (no longer available on the SafeWorkSA website). This is a remarkable contrast to the, presumably expensive, Dupont-based achievement of Australian construction company, Grocon. The win also illustrates the continued importance of the need for free, or cheap, practical plain safety advice. (Why isn’t there a Dummies Guide to Workplace Safety?)

The Hub Fruit Bowl’s achievement could have far-reaching effects as the low-cost approach can be applied to thousands of small businesses in Australia. The greengrocer has a healthy record of providing young people with their first jobs, jobs that include a solid understanding of workplace health and safety. The Grocon experience is more corporate and very common where solutions are sought from outside one’s business.

The Hub Fruit Bowl’s win should encourage OHS regulators to reassess their small business OHS strategies. Instead of funding OHS consultants to provide three or six hours of OHS advice, frequent encouragement and engagement with small business, structured round documented processes may be more effective. SafeWorkSA does not mention the concept of “case managers” but applying this to harm and injury prevention strategies may have merit. Providing sustained support and encouragement instead of a quick intense session should be seriously considered by OHS regulators.

It may also be useful to consider providing pro-bono safety services to small businesses, as a civic duty but also to freshen the experiences of safety professionals.

Kevin Jones

Australian OHS awards need reviewing now more than ever

The various government safety awards process in Australia needs a thorough coordinated review in order to maintain their relevance. Earlier last year WorkSafe Victoria tried a new strategy to increase community participation in their awards process. This involved monthly mini-awards and nominees calling on their friends and professional networks for support and votes. It was worth a try but WorkSafe Victoria went it alone and it will be difficult to sustain this strategy without broader support, probably from the other States.

SafetyAtWorkBlog stated following last year’s national safety awards ceremony that change was required but no one took up the challenge. The need for review was even more evident at this year’s Safe Work Australia Awards held last week. The lacklustre atmosphere could have been partly due to an MC, Paul McDermott, who is more comfortable piercing the pretensions of institutions. In these awards, it would have been rude to make fun of workplace safety. McDermott understood this and could only make jokes of his own brushes with danger, such as having his scrotum pierced with a winklepinker. But it is more likely that the awards had more serious deficiencies. Continue reading “Australian OHS awards need reviewing now more than ever”

Bill Shorten speaks at the Safe Work Australia Awards

Australia’s Employment and Workplace Relations Minister, Bill Shorten had a very busy day on 26 April 2012 with the recent actions over the management of the Health Services Union. Tha evening he spoke eloquently and passionately at the Annual Safe Work Australia Awards. Not only did he speak but he also spent several hours speaking with award finalists winners. At these sorts of functions many politicians cannot wait to escape. But Bill Shorten is enormously well qualified for his role as the minister for employment relations, including workplace safety.

He diverged strongly from his written speech yet there was one section that he clearly felt strongly about and it is a point that many safety professionals should remember:

“Hazards and risks and the entire approach to risk assessment and risk management generally do not address what really happens at work. Beaconsfield gold mine had such a system. Longford oil and gas refinery had such a system before sections of it blew up in 1998.

It is not the systems or the fancy talk about culture that will save people’s lives.” (link added) Continue reading “Bill Shorten speaks at the Safe Work Australia Awards”

Just workplace hardship

Yossi Berger writes:

We’re all familiar with the notions of focus and attention, and selective attention. We’ve all experienced how difficult it can be to attend to target information when background noise is distracting. The issue can be referred to as the signal-to-noise ratio.

I often find its effects in discussions with managers and workers during workplace inspections. That is, I hear animated discussions of hazards, of risks, of risk assessments and risk management and various systems and theories. The conversations over flow with these concepts whilst most of workers’ daily problems aren’t even raised, they don’t reach the level of a signal.

Thankfully in most workplaces, most managers and most workers have not experienced any fatalities. By far most of them will not have experienced or witnessed a serious injury or serious disease. Nor have most experienced their local hazards actually seriously hurting anyone.

But most workers will have experienced some dangerous working conditions, mostly not mortally dangerous, but dangerous. Continue reading “Just workplace hardship”

Category: Leadership

“Do some good” sounds more effective than achieving “zero harm”

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Safety leadership and culture require accountability

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Favourable progress could be achieved on OHS if the current reality is accepted

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Award winner illustrates a potential new approach to small business OHS support

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Australian OHS awards need reviewing now more than ever

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Bill Shorten speaks at the Safe Work Australia Awards

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Just workplace hardship

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