Peter Sandman in Australia

On 22 September 2010, Dr Peter Sandman will be conducting a workshop in Sydney Australia entitled Precaution Advocacy – Risk Communication for Occupational Health and Safety and presented by the  NSW Minerals Council OHS Workshop  .

The NSW Minerals Council says

“This is a rare opportunity to hear from such a world renowned expert in crisis communication, precautionary advocacy, risk communication and outrage management.”

Having corresponded with Peter for many years and having interviewed him for a couple of hours several years back  I can say that I learned much (poor quality audio available HERE).  If I was in Sydney, this would be a must-attend event.  More information on the Sandman workshop is available by emailing the organiser.

For those who have not been exposed to Peter’s lectures and writings, he has a series of articles concerning BP’s Gulf of Mexico problems that are instructive.

Kevin Jones

UK case exposes the hypocrisy of leadership commitment

Most safety professionals can tell stories about how workplace injuries are hidden so that bonuses or rewards are still distributed even though they are not warranted.  Most of these examples are at the shop-floor level where rewards, although much anticipated, are minor – first aid kits, movie tickets, sometimes money – and where peer pressure can be quite overpowering.  But occasionally a situation is revealed where senior executives also rort the system in order to obtain a reward or a bonus.  In September 2010, the UK union Unite has revealed just such a case in Network Rail, a case where the chairman has acknowledged that greed played a role. Continue reading “UK case exposes the hypocrisy of leadership commitment”

Death at work and work-related death

People die every day.  Some die in their sleep in bed, some collapse in the street, some suicide at a place of their choosing, others die at work.  But for those who die at work there is an important differentiation between dying at work and dying from work.

The differentiation can be fairly simple to determine but can be muddied by workplace politics.  For instance, the South Australian desalination project (video report available) has had one work-related fatality but there have been at least three deaths on-site.  Determining what is work-related is important for safety managers as this affects the way an incident is investigated, the resources allocated to the investigation and the level of emphasis placed on prevention. Continue reading “Death at work and work-related death”

Workplace bullying needs prompt and concise action to be effective

It is very important to treat media reports of bullying with a great deal of scepticism.  An article in the Herald-Sun on 20 July 2010 is a good example of the collation of new and old information intended to generate alarm or outrage.

Werribee Secondary College has had several incidents of occupational violence and school violence.   All schools will have bullying incidents of student to student but these can be minimised and controlled with effort, commitment and vision.  Bullying between staff is different, although the controls are similar, and inhabits the  different legislative context of OHS.  WorkSafe Victoria has been involved with workplace bullying incidents in the education sector in the past.

The Herald-Sun builds on the myth that teachers have it easy because of the amount of leave that is scheduled. The current article entitled “Teacher seeks bullying payout” has a headline about workplace bullying but the article mixes up student bullying and workplace bullying as if they are the same issue but to different degrees and with different participants.

The Victorian Education Department has addressed the issue of workplace bullying to some extent.  The department has several sites devoted to bullying issues and occupational violence but much of it refers back to policies and reactionary responses.  Continue reading “Workplace bullying needs prompt and concise action to be effective”

OHS: The Pearl Harbour Syndrome

OHS:  The Pearl Harbour Syndrome[i]

– Poverty of Expectations –

The Japanese attack on US forces at Pearl Harbour in the Hawaiian Islands on Sunday 7th December 1941 was a military disaster for the US described as a totally unforseen and unforeseeable attack.  It shocked the American people and brought the US into WWII (essentially the next day).  The element of total surprise (‘Why were our forces so ‘unexpecting’ and unprepared?’) was defended with the implication that, ‘we were still negotiating with the government of Japan and its Emperor in good faith’ and there was no state of war between the two nations.  In a speech to congress the next day President Franklin Roosevelt called it, “… a date which will live in infamy – the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan”.

Controversy surrounds various aspects of the attack[ii] but it has become synonymous with surprise and astonishment.  However, research over the years suggests that in fact it was preceded by a large number of misunderstood or ignored warnings and missed signs.   The reason these were so completely missed, according to one scholar, is because of ‘poverty of expectations’ – routine attention to the obvious and reduced horizons for imaginative projections. Continue reading “OHS: The Pearl Harbour Syndrome”

Safety Cases must become a reality in the US

Some of the media, over the weekend, was critical of BP for not applying a Safety Case to the BP/Deepwater horizon oil rig.  The Safety Case is an established method of assessing risk in high-hazard organisations and should have been applied.  Whether such a technique would have made any difference is debatable as it is hypothetical.

Safety Case regimes have proven effective and are used as a default risk setting in many corporations but the story is not only one of a specific Safety Case missed opportunity.  BP is an example of corporate hypocrisy that supports the cynicism of the community to large corporations whose actions do not reflect their commitment. Continue reading “Safety Cases must become a reality in the US”

Safety professionals and regulators must think more broadly and for the future

The European Agency for Occupational Safety & Health at Work has released its Annual Report for 2009/10.  Most of the content should be familiar to those who follow EU-OSHA through their blogs and publications but it provides a good indication of the future of OHS in Europe and the methods that will applied in that future.

Annual Report - Full

One significant achievement of EU-OSHA is its anticipation of workplace hazards.  Few OHS regulators and agencies have had the resources or will to forecast the next set of hazards.  The nature of regulators has been reactive possibly because they remain largely uncertain of how to step beyond the factory fence to acknowledge OHS as a broad social element and, after decades of compartmentalising safety and health to the workplace, to try to catch up with the spread of new varieties of workplaces. Continue reading “Safety professionals and regulators must think more broadly and for the future”

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