psychiatric – Page 68 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Global OHS statistics and trends

It is very easy to forget that workplace health and safety is a global issue. The pressures of work and the daily OHS issues can constrict our perspective for so long that we are surprised when we are reminded that people work everywhere and are therefore in danger in some way.

An article (citation below) from the Scandinavian Journal of Work, Environment & Health released online on 12 November 2009 is just one of those reminders that we need every so often. The article is called “The global and European work environment – numbers, trends, and strategies” and says

“We have estimated that globally there are 2.3 million deaths annually for reasons attributed to work.”

For the statistics junkies, the article goes on to report that 1.95 million of the annual deaths are due to illness and

“The average rate of disability and absence from work can be some 25% of the workforce in Europe.”

“The biggest causes of work-related illness in Europe are musculoskeletal diseases and psychosocial disorders (mental health)….”

“Work-related stress….affect(ed) an estimated 22% of EU workers in 2005…”

By looking at a variety of statistical records, the authors conclude that

“In the present political situation and serious economic downturn, legal measures need to be supplemented with economic justification and convincing arguments to reduce corner-cutting and avoid long-term disabilities, premature retirement, and corporate closures due to a poor work environment.”

Global OHS pyramid — The relationship between fatalities and other outcomes of work injuries and illnesses

The researchers advocate an integrated approach to managing safety in a workplace and list a “toolbox” of suggested areas. Many of these are already in place in many management systems.

This sort of global data is not going to change the management or operational practices in individual workplaces. That change will mostly come in response to site-specific events or initiatives. Governments need to know these statistics and trends so that they may plan strategic programs or structure their legislation but it is equally important for citizens and OHS professionals to be aware of this data for it is the citizens who hold governments accountable.

Kevin Jones

Takala J, Urrutia M, Hämäläinen P, Saarela KL. The global and European work environment – numbers, trends, and strategies. SJWEH Suppl. 2009;(7):15–23.

How to make positive training programs attractive to OHS professionals

Yesterday’s article on positive training programs and behaviour-based safety (BBS) has generated a great deal of interest and attention.

The article’s title should maybe have specified the “OHS context”. Like with Return-To-Work, OHS professionals need BBS and positive training to be explained to their understanding so they see how it fits with their own safety management systems. They need to have their own “light-bulb moment on the relevance of the training not be convinced of the need by a sales person.

HR professionals may be more receptive to positive training concepts because they are more familiar with the psych babble but OHS still has engineering as the basis for the profession. Only in the last 10 years have OHS professionals accepted (not universally) the legitimacy of psychosocial hazards and that, primarily, because the OHS regulators released guidance on the hazards.

Don’t try to apply leadership and training to OHS through HR because the jargon confuses. Introduce yourself to some OHS people and listen to them talk of their profession. Research the attitudes of the OHS people directly. Do not rely on external research surveys as it is more important for you to understand OHS people than for a survey to report “47% of OHS professionals think resilience training programs are twaddle”.

Once you have listened, go personally to other OHS professionals and practitioners with training programs that can be readily integrated into safety management systems. Don’t expect your potential clients to exert effort to understand you, it’s your job to understand them.

And don’t expect a quick decision. Good OHS professionals will ask their colleagues and peers what they think of your programs and concepts before getting back to you. They may even approach their OHS associations for an opinion.

Past approaches to OHS professionals on BBS and similar training have been embarrassing. One notable BBS advocate from the US spoke around five years ago to about 400 OHS people in Australia. At morning tea time around half left the (expensive) seminar convinced that BBS was a crock. That advocate is still highly regarded in the US but Australians just didn’t “get it”.

Slapping up a couple of pictures of the Sydney Opera House in a presentation, or walking the room like an evangelist, does more harm than good. Come prepared and prepared to listen and the OHS professional may “get it”…..even just a little bit.

Kevin Jones

Behavioural-based safety put into context

Yesterday Associate Professor Tony LaMontagne spoke at the monthly networking meeting of the Central Safety Group in Australia. His presentation was based around his research into job stress and its relationship with mental health.

LaMontagne was talking about the dominant position in personnel management where negative thoughts generate a negative working environment, one of stress, dissatisfaction and lower productivity. SafetyAtWorkBlog asked whether this was the basis for many of the positive attitudinal programs, or behaviour-based safety programs, that are frequently spruiked to the modern corporations.

He said that this was the case and that such programs can have a positive affect on people’s attitudes to work. But LaMontagne then expressed one of those ideas that can only come from outside an audience’s general field of expertise. He said that the limitations of such programs are that they focus on the individual in isolation from their work. He wondered how successful such a program will be in the long-term if a worker returns from a “happiness class” to a persistently large workload or excessive hours. The benefits of the positive training are likely to be short-lived.

This presented the suggestion that positive training programs, those professing resilience, leadership, coping skills and a range of other psychological synonyms, may be the modern equivalent of “blaming the worker”. The big risk of this approach to safety is that it ignores the relationship of the worker with the surrounding work environment and management resources and policies. Even the worker who is furthest from head office does not work in isolation.

It is unclear what the positive training programs aim to achieve. Teaching coping skills provides the worker with ways of coping with work pressures, but what if those pressures are unfair or unreasonable? What if those pressures included bullying, harassment, excessive workloads? Will the employer be meeting their OHS obligations for a safe and healthy working environment by having workers who can cope with these hazards rather than addressing those hazards themselves?

Professor LaMontagne reminded the OHS professionals in attendance yesterday that the aim of OHS is to eliminate the hazards and not to accommodate them. He asked whether an OHS professional would be doing their job properly if they only handed out earplugs and headphones rather than try to make the workplace quieter?

Recently SafetyAtWorkBlog received an email about a new stress management program that involves “performance enhancement, changing the way people view corporate team dynamics”. Evidence was requested on the measurable success of the program. No evidence on the program was available but one selling point was that the company had lots of clients. This type of stress management sales approach came to mind when listening to Professor Montagne.

When preparing to improve the safety performance of one’s company consider the whole of the company’s operations and see what OHS achievements may be possible. Think long-term for structural and organisational change and resist the solutions that have the advantage of being visible to one’s senior executives but short on long-term benefits.

And be cautious of the type of approaches one may receive along the lines of programs that can change

“…high performance habits so employees can operate at 100% engagement and take their achievement to the next level while achieving a healthier culture in the workplace”.

Kevin Jones

Note: Kevin Jones is a life member of the Central Safety Group. The CSG is just finalising its website (http://www.centralsafetygroup.com/)where information of forthcoming meetings will be available.

The personal cost of surviving a major hazard explosion

As one gets older, the “where are they now?” columns in the newspapers or the summer magazine supplements become more interesting. The articles of faded pop stars and political one-time wonders are diverting but every so often one makes you stop and think.

OHS is not renowned for “where are they nows?”. The discipline and the profession has few celebrities but there are important people. One such person is Jim Ward. Jim’s story is long and involved but he came to the public’s attention as a survivor of the 1998 gas explosion at the Esso gas plant in Longford Victoria. The blast, which killed 2 workers, crippled the State’s gas supply for almost 2 weeks. A Royal Commission was held into the disaster.

Usually a worker’s evidence may be reported on for a day or two in such an investigation but Jim Ward became more than that primarily due to the attempt, according to some, by Esso Australia (a subsidiary of ExxonMobil) to scapegoat Jim. This attempt was roundly condemned in the Royal Commission.

In the Australasian Mine Safety Journal, Jim Ward has written a short personal account of what happened that day but, more importantly, how that day has changed his life.

After the failure of steel exchanger and before the fatal explosion, Ward writes:

“I raced to a doorway and looked out into the gas plant where I saw a thick white fog rolling down the walkway. This white fog was a cloud of vaporised hydrocarbon. Gas – highly flammable gas.

Out of the fog stumbled two zombie-like creatures. Two men – blackened from head to toe. They were covered in soot which had been blown from the inside of the huge steel exchanger when it violently ruptured. They had their arms out in front of them trying to feel their way through the fog, blinking as if trying to catch some daylight to help guide them to safety.

Over the roar of the jet–engine–like sound of gas spewing into the atmosphere I yelled – I yelled at them to get into the control room. Into the control room and to relative safety. Ninety seconds later the gas found a source of ignition and a second, much louder explosion shook the control room building again.

What followed from that moment on was sheer unadulterated terror.”

In his article he goes on to explain the psychological impact of that day and the diagnosis of his post-traumatic stress syndrome. Ward rightly points out that mental health is poorly understood in the workplace.

Many employers are satisfied if they get through a single day without a problem or complaint but silence is not compliance and there may be mental health issues that require attending to even though they are difficult to identify.

Ward’s article is a timely reminder that the measurement of a successful OHS management system or a more personal “safe system of work” has changed and that business needs to scrutinise OHS auditors on the mental health assessment criteria.

Perhaps, most particularly to Australia, it is necessary to gauge OHS laws through contemporary hazards, such as mental health. The law will exist for decades and need to be able to adapt to emerging hazards, many of them not coming from the physical.

His article also means that workers need to consider colleagues as more than just colleagues and look to their humanity. In the past many of us are inclusive and dismissive when we refer to someone as a work mate. People are more than that.

It may be, as this article is written on 9 November 2009, that Jim Ward’s message has already been learnt by the survivors and emergency workers of the World Trade Center from 2001. But for many outside the United States it is also two days before Armistice Day, the end of the World War which really brought shell-shock or combat stress reaction and post traumatic stress disorder to the public mind.

When remembering the fallen in war and work we should also ask “where are they now?”

Kevin Jones

More on leave retention and mental health

The research statistics quoted in an earlier blog article have finally been located.

It is important to understand the limitations of the study. Firstly, these are not statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics so they do not have the same weight as the regularly issued Labour Force statistics. It would be great if the government began collating this useful economic and business information.

The data released by Tourism Australia also does not include owner-operators or part-time employees. Part-time employees account for over 3 million Australians out of a total population of 22 million*. That seems a large number to leave out of the calculation.

Nor does the study include any annual leave that does not involve travel. So if one takes annual leave and recuperate in one’s backyard for four weeks or some quality time with the kids, this is not included.

These restrictions alone show that official statistics on leave use and retention are needed.

The Research Data has some comments specifically about the workplace

“There is a consistent and widespread perception that leave is harder to take than it used to be. Two separate shifts have contributed to this feeling: that it is harder to take time off from work and that it is more difficult to plan holidays.”

Whether it is harder to plan holidays is not relevant to SafetyAtWorkBlog but why is it harder to take time off from work? It is unclear if this is a perspective of the employee or the employer. What is easier to accept is that

“Organisations were no longer seen to factor leave-taking into employee workloads, but expected people to work 52 weeks per year.”

From an OHS perspective this is unforgivable, unhealthy and unsafe. Any companies that do this are breaching their OHS obligations of providing a safe and healthy working environment.

“People are shifting into ‘work addiction’ behaviour irrespective of how they feel about it. They’re working longer hours and are under pressure to perform. Despite a higher consciousness of the importance of work/life balance, many believe things are going in the other direction.

Rather than the onus of planning leave being on the organisation as in the past, it was viewed that this has shifted to the individual. Whereas many organisations used to have cover for people going on leave, it was seen that it is now the responsibility of individuals to organise their workloads if they want to take leave.”

Further research on what caused the change of attitude would be fascinating. It is suspected that the survey frenzy generated by the global financial crisis may be showing results soon on this issue.

What the research data indicates is that there may be “employers of choice” and one’s awareness of work/life balance is high but the reality is vastly different. There may be financial, organisational and career barriers to achieving some form of stability in mental health and productivity. What is undeniable is that having leave from work is as important for one’s mental wellbeing as sleep, and to neglect either is not healthy or productive.

What we need is hard and authoritative evidence so that those who motivate change can do so from a position of authority rather than from impressions.

Kevin Jones

*As with all statistical calculations in SafetyAtWorkBlog, please verify them from the original data. (Arts graduates can describe “alliteration” but can’t count very well) If wrong, please advise us immediately.

HWCA could be influential in Australia’s workers’ compensation reforms

Australia and New Zealand have a small strategic organisation called the Heads of Workers’ Compensation Authorities (HWCA, pronounced “howca” by those in the know). It is a regular meeting (some say “love-in”, others say “coven”) of the CEOs of the various workers’ compensation bodies in Australia and New Zealand. Over the next five years, as the Australian Government begins to harmonise/reform the workers’ compensation system, HWCA will be important to watch.

In early October 2009, HWCA met and endorsed a coordination strategy, that has yet to be publicly released. The main objectives of the strategy were noted in a media release (also not yet publicly available) to mark the latest meeting.

“To deliver best practice services to injured workers and employers to assist recovery: and

to build sustainable workers’ compensation schemes.”

The terminology of the first objective may provide a good indication of the type of organisation HWCA seems to be. “Best practice services”??? “Best practice” is one of the worst corporate jargons being used at the moment. This article at Wikipedia outlines the context of the phrase well.

“As the term has become more popular, some organizations have begun using the term “best practices” to refer to what are in fact merely ‘rules’….”

In other words, HWCA has a strategy to do what its member organisations should have been doing all along – enforcing the rules of good customer service and providing the best level of service to injured workers.

Perhaps it is the second strategic objective that best illustrates the aims of HWCA – to make sure that the workers’ compensation schemes do not lose money.

According to the communique that is released after every meeting (top points for open communication)

“HWCA agreed the Bio-psychosocial Rehabilitation Working Group would develop a national action plan regarding prevention of long-term disability and work loss, which will support the strategy.”

Prevention is the role of the OHS authorities in Australia and the Department of Labour in New Zealand. Clearly HWCA will be discussing these strategic aims with those in charge of preventing injuries and illnesses. But can the various WorkCovers and WorkSafes cope with biopsychosocial hazards? Surely HWCA will also be talking with all the NGOs who lobby on depression, anxiety, fatigue, stress, wellness, happiness ………….. (Get ready for even more influence for BeyondBlue)

Consultation will also be needed with the various government departments involved with health promotion, public and occupational. Not to mention the unions, employer associations and health professional bodies.

A strategy of such magnitude would require considerable resources and horse-trading through government ranks in all jurisdictions. It is hard to see this being achieved through a meeting of Chief Executive Officers, and should such a strategy be pushed through individual workers’ compensation bodies anyway?

To achieve true reform of workers’ compensation and to resist the substantial pressure that is likely to come from the Australian and international insurance companies, the Australian government is going to need considerable negotiating skills. Because of the involvement with the financially influential insurance companies, it is doubtful the intended reforms will be achieved. (HWCA already has discussions with the “Heads of Compulsory Third Party Insurers” according to the communique)

Almost as a post-script, it is noted that Greg Tweedly, CEO of WorkSafe Victoria, takes over the chairmanship of HWCA from the CEO of WorkCover NSW, Jon Blackwell. Tweedly is a very busy CEO and will become more so, if the rumour proves true that he will be joining the National Board of the Safety Institute of Australia.

As the chairmanship moves from New South Wales, so will HWCA’s administrative support. The next HWCA meeting is scheduled for 5 February 2010 and will be coordinated through the Victorian Workcover Authority or Comcare.

Kevin Jones

The retention of leave indicates a broken business

The Australian Chamber of Commerce & Industry (ACCI) has released a statement that discusses the economic and personal costs of presenteeism in relation to Australia’s new National Employment Standards.

In the statement the ACCI mentions:

“…the colossal national stockpile of annual leave and its toxic impact on the wellbeing of business and employees.”

“It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes or even Dr Watson to deduce that employees who take their annual leave are far less likely to take a ‘sickie’ due to fatigue or illness.”

The statistics quoted by ACCI include:

123 million days stockpiled nationally.

$33.3 billion value to national leave stockpile.

73% of national leave stockpilers are likely to be managers and earn more than $70K per annum.

71% of leave stockpilers nationally are likely to be male.

73% of leave stockpilers consider work/life balance to be important to their lives.

70% of leave stockpilers consider taking leave to be a good way to achieve work/life balance.

It is not unreasonable to assert that the excessive retention of leave by an individual is an indication that that person does not understand that annual leave is an important element of their own mental health and safety at work.

If an executive believes they are indispensable to the company then that executive is making poor OHS decisions that flow to other employees. Just as positive change can come from the senior management so can unhealthy work practices. The retention of leave is just such a practice.

In a broader corporate and management context, the retention of excessive leave is an indication of a poorly managed business. Leave, and its mental health benefits, should be integrated into the operational business strategy. No one should be indispensable in a work role, although it is acknowledged that Plan B’s are not always as effective as Plan A’s.

Business continuity and risk management demand that contingencies be put in place for prolonged absences, or short leave breaks.

ACCI has to be admired for bringing the retention of leave to the attention of its members but the release is principally an information leaflet for a government tourism website. Being physically absent from work is very different from being mentally absent from work.

To achieve a proper break from work, contact with the workplace and clients must be severed. Even in this situation it may take several days to break out of “work mode”, to stop reaching for the mobile phone, to stop worrying about whether a work task is being done and to start the process of relaxing.

A “good” workplace, a “workplace of choice”, should have work management structures in place to allow its employees to recuperate from the pressures of work. This is beyond flexible work structures and needs a business to thoroughly understand the mental health needs of its workers and business continuity.

Kevin Jones

The original research data for the figures above has been located and is available elsewhere on SafetyAtWorkBlog

Category: psychiatric

Global OHS statistics and trends

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How to make positive training programs attractive to OHS professionals

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The personal cost of surviving a major hazard explosion

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More on leave retention and mental health

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HWCA could be influential in Australia’s workers’ compensation reforms

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The retention of leave indicates a broken business

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