Chain letters were bad enough in the old days when both stamps and envelopes were licked but the internet has resurrected a lot of myths simply because it costs next to nothing to distribute the crap. Urban myths have evolved into internet outrage and, sadly, even OHS professionals forward on this rubbish. Continue reading “Snopes can cut through the OHS bull”
Category: myths
Does OHS training work?
Businesses thrive on the concept of return on investment (ROI) but it has been very hard to apply this to training in workplace safety and SafetyatWorkBlog can only provide clues to this relationship.
Training is an important component in any company’s safety management program but it will not solve all OHS ills, regardless of the claims of some training providers. Specific training to achieve licences is one type of training where skills become directly practical but other training, such as First Aid, Health & Safety Representative (HSR) training or general OHS training, is more difficult to quantify. Continue reading “Does OHS training work?”
HSE Chair’s review of 2009
Judith Hackett, Chair of the UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE), reviews the performance of the agency in the December podcast produced by the agency. Transcript is available online
The podcast provides a positive outlook for the HSE which one would expect. Hackett talks about the need for the HSE to dispel the myths that have been promoted throughout the media and the lack of credibility of the regulator discussed by many in the UK, such as Jeremy Clarkson. Continue reading “HSE Chair’s review of 2009”
Tory leader calls for a “forensic examination” of health and safety culture
David Cameron, the leader of England’s Conservative Party, has spoken about the health and safety culture that he says is restricting personal and business options in England.
In the full speech, Cameron clearly outlines an ideological agenda but it is a mistake to see this as an attack on the OHS regulator. Below is an edited summary of the most relevant bits of his speech:
“In almost every area, the Conservative Party aims to remove the obstacles that prevent people from making their own decisions.
That’s why we plan a radical redistribution of power, giving control over education, housing and policing to local people.
…there is a growing sense that too many areas of our life are governed by petty rules, regulations and tick box bureaucracy that flies in the face of common sense, undermines discretion and prevents us from getting on with our lives.
We see it in our police force,… our prisons, …our schools, [and] our hospitals
[the the over-the-top health and safety culture] is… infuriating. It … stifles judgement and discretion……is a straitjacket on personal initiative and responsibility……and is a big barrier to the creation of the big society.
…something has gone seriously wrong with the spirit of health and safety in the past decade.
…it is clear that what began as a noble intention to protect people from harm has mutated into a stultifying blanket of bureaucracy, suspicion and fear that has saturated our country…
How has this over-the-top health and safety culture become embedded in our national way of life? [emphasis added]
- [European] bureaucratic rules
- The Labour Government
But the biggest cause of this excessive health and safety culture is the way these rules have been interpreted and used.
What is more the problem is the perception we have allowed to develop that in Britain today, behind every accident there is someone who is personally culpable……someone who must pay.
[It is encouraged by]
- adverts on television
- the commercialising of lawyers’ incentives to generate litigation
- the rising premiums and concerns of the insurance industry.
- high-profile claims and pay-outs.
This has all helped to create a legal hypersensitivity to risk, accident and injury. And this has had a direct knock-on effect on the health and safety culture.
So it is not just the regulations from Brussels, or even the distrustful, interfering government that has created this culture, or the insurance industry, ……it is that everyone’s so worried about being sued that they invent lots of their own rules on top of the regulations that already exist.
… perhaps the most damaging consequences of this excessive health and safety culture have occurred in our society.
… the health and safety culture actively undermines responsibility.
CONSERVATIVE APPROACH
First, establish clear and specific principles about when health and safety legislation is appropriate, and when it is not, so we can evaluate whether existing or future legislation is necessary.
Second, we will propose practical changes in the law to both help bring an end to the culture of excessive litigation while at the same time giving legal safeguards to those who need them most.
HEALTH AND SAFETY CHANGES
there are three particular scenarios where this is the case.
The first is when consumers have a lack of information, or are unable to understand technical information, about a product or a service they are purchasing.
The second situation in which official action on health and safety is appropriate is where there is an imbalance of power.
The third situation in which there is a case for health and safety oversight is when someone might have a clear motive – normally profit – to put someone else in danger.
That’s because keeping people safe is often more expensive than exposing them to risk.
[REVIEW]
I have asked Lord Young to lead an extensive review on this subject for the Conservative Party. He has a track record of deregulation and cutting bureaucracy. He also has experience in the legal profession and will judge these issues with the care and attention they deserve. And he will look at everything from the working of the Health and Safety Executive, to the nature of our health and safety laws, litigation and the insurance industry.
There are some specific questions I have asked David Young to investigate urgently.
The first question is: how can we best protect what are effectively ‘Good Samaritans’?
In Australia, concern about the effect of increasing payouts for medical negligence led to a full review of civil liability. Its final report concluded that when an individual is acting in good faith – as a Good Samaritan – and takes reasonable actions to help someone, then they should not be found negligent.
Second, can we help alleviate some of health and safety oversight that currently burdens small, local and voluntary organisations?
Third, do we need a Civil Liability Act?
I know the over-the-top health and safety culture that has grown in our country in recent years provokes a lot of understandable anger. But anger itself is not solution. Instead we need a forensic examination of what has gone wrong and the steps we need to take to put it right.”
Cameron’s speech has some valid points even if the ideological path that he has followed to get here may be unpalatable.
What separates this from a Jeremy Clarkson rant is that he is not targeting any one particular bureaucracy or social group. He acknowledges that there are a range of social factors that have, over time, created what he believes is an “over-the-top health and safety culture”. Cameron may have chosen extremes to illustrate his points but most OHS professionals would not be averse to a review of OHS laws particularly if such a review included other social structures that make their lives difficult but over which they have no influence.
Along the way, the chance for the political boot up the jaxy of the regulators and the unions, and those dreadful Europeans, will be irresistable for the Conservatives, but if planned for occupational health and safety may salvage some useful tools.
It must be remembered that the Conservatives are not in power in England but even from here in Australia, the Prime Minister Gordon Brown looks like a dead man walking.
Some commentators have already responded to the “outrageous” suggestions in Cameron’s speech. More union response similar to this from Grahame Smith, General Secretary of the Scottish Trades Union Congress, can be expected.
“The families of the tens of thousands of workers who have been killed and maimed at work will find these comments deeply offensive. David Cameron has sent a chilling message to the working people in the UK that any future Conservative Government will attack the health and safety laws that trade unions have spent decades fighting for.
“This is not about draconian legislation. This is about the failure, or unwillingness, of employers, community groups and others to grasp the very basics of our health and safety system.
“We have witnessed what poor regulation has done for our finance sector and the economy. We do not want to see this attack on health and safety legislation having a similar catastrophic effect on human lives. Our economy will recover. Individuals killed at work and their families never recover from the consequence of poor health and safety regulation.
“We would say to David Cameron if you want to learn about the true consequences of health and safety failures read Hazards Magazine and come to Scotland and meet families who have lost loved ones due to health and safety failures by employers. Don’t subscribe to the trivial nonsense which is churned out by sections of the media.”
Smith is correct to remind Cameron to not rely on the media from which to develop policies, particularly the English print media. Smith comparison of OHS legislation to financial market regulation is also valid. Legislation should never be used as a blanket control mechanism but requires targeting.
Another union, Prospect, had this to say
On behalf of 1,650 HSE inspectors, scientists and other specialists, Prospect negotiator Mike Macdonald said: “There is a world of difference between petty bureaucracy enacted under the label of health and safety and HSE regulation designed to prevent deaths in the workplace.
“Measures aimed at preventing death and injury at work run the risk of being overshadowed by inappropriate obsessions by local authorities with minor issues that are often an excuse for withdrawing services on the grounds of cost. Given the importance of health and safety to the British economy and UK businesses we would welcome any changes that boost workers’ safety as well as business competitiveness.
“But confusing the two continues to perpetuate a negative image of health and safety regulation and masks the bigger picture: as the figures for 2007/08 show 32,810 employees were exposed to fatal and major injuries at work.”
If (when) the Conservatives come to power in England, Cameron and Lord Young will need to structure an inquiry that is inclusive and designed to be constructive. Many people will approach such an inquiry with decades of suspicion and many memories of despair and disappointment. In many ways the laws require a rationalisation, not a revolution and this is what Cameron needs to “sell” as he gets ready for the next election, due in the first half of 2010.
The OHS “fun vampires” hit the theatre
Several weeks ago, I took my family to the filming of a TV program. As with most of this things there is a person who “warms up” the audience and which seems to involve the throwing of lots of lollies and sweets. (If only weddings used sweets instead of bouquets there might be more takers) The warm up act will always make one of two references to “having someone’s eye out with that one” as they throw the sweets.
England’s Health and Safety Executive have chosen this “hazard” as their December OHS myth. It’s particularly important for the English as the pantomime season begins. The HSE says
“Health and safety rules were blamed when a panto stopped throwing out sweets to the audience. In fact they were worried about the cost of compensation if anyone got hurt….
Realistically, if a panto throws out sweets the chances of someone being seriously hurt is incredibly low. It’s certainly not something HSE worries about …”
The hazard of being injured from stage projectiles is real and it was only 2000 when a law suit was settled between Dame Edna Everage and a man who was hit in the eye with a gladioli thrown from stage.
Whether being injured by a projectile from the stage is an OHS matter or a public liability situation is debatable. My risk management lecturer used to say that one should always sue the deepest pockets.
It is not OHS which is generating the safety rules. OHS regulators are reacting to the increased litigation that is being touted by lawyers, bled into the Western culture through US television programs and being seen as a “nice little earner” by some in the community. Most of the critics are facing the wrong target but are doing so because the OHS regulator is an easier target.
As an OHS professional, I would have to say do not throw anything into an audience or crowd unless it is an essential element of the performance. There are other ways of distributing treats.
The myth of the three-hour sleep
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.
Evidence, subjectivity and myth
There is a big push for occupational safety and health decisions to be made on evidence. OHS academics in Australia are particularly big on this and there is considerable validity in the lobbying but as academics can have a vested interest in research, the calls are often dismissed.
There is also, around the world, a questioning of the value and validity of the risk assessment process related to workplace safety. In Europe, in particular, the business groups see risk assessment as a major unnecessary business cost (but then again, how many businesses even perform OHS risk assessments?). Risk assessment has often been criticised because of its subjectivity. In some circumstances, risk assessment may perpetuate workplace and safety myths.
In the absence of evidence, myths fill the gap. Sometimes assessments, investigations, estimates and FOAFs (friend of a friend) add to the tenuous credibility of those myths.
Peter Sandman has talked about dispelling myths through risk communication. One myth he discusses, the risks of flu vaccinations, is also touched on in an interview with Dr Aaron E. Carroll of the Indiana University School of Medicine on the ABC’s Life Matters program.
OHS professionals must seek evidence on workplace hazards so that their advice is sound but equally, myths must be countered. The links in the paragraph above, along with the excellent website, www.snopes.com, can provide some assistance in how we can reduce the transmission of myths.
I am a big advocate of the “contrary”. Only by asking questions about established beliefs and tenets can the flaws in our decision-making be illustrated. Sometimes this is dismissed as being a “Devil’s Advocate” but the process does not advocate bad behaviours, it questions the basis for established behaviours – a process that many people, organisations AND business find enormously threatening.
As we get older or become socialised, we tend to forget the tale most of us heard as a child, The Emperor’s New Clothes. This tale should be read regularly to remind us of how the contrary position, the quizzical, can be constructive and sometimes, revolutionary (even though in the tale the Emperor ignores the child’s spoken truth) but still provide evidence.