Category: safety culture

What can we learn from a failure in leadership?

Cover of 2013_Orica_Code-of-Conduct-1Many OHS professionals state that leadership is a crucial element to establishing a safety culture and then support this with examples of positive leadership.  But some people fail at leadership and failure is often more instructional than success.  Recently the CEO of Orica, Ian Smith, had to resign after his abusive manner resulted in the resignations of  two employees.  This is bad enough but when the Board hired Smith around three years earlier, the Board saw his manner as attractive.  If leadership is crucial to a safety culture, what does this say about Orica’s decisions?

The Chanticleer column of the Australian Financial Review (AFR) wrote on March 24 2015 (paywalled):

“The board’s determination to have Smith shake Orica to its foundations was so great it allowed him to destroy staff engagement and walk all over the company’s culture of mutual respect.  What is so bewildering about this deliberately aggressive and occasionally bullying change management strategy is that it was endorsed by a range of respected non-executive directors…..”

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Bring on the safety storyteller

Cover of Casebook4-2One of the most effective ways of learning is by listening to or reading stories.  This has been an accepted truth since well before the printed word, even though modern training educators sometimes justify the importance of storytelling through pseudo-neurology-speak. It is the purpose of research to verify and question truths and to, hopefully, through this process to expand our knowledge and understanding but research into the telling of safety stories seems rare.

One recent article* of research (not freely available) into storytelling and the construction industry has been written by Jodith Leung and Patrick Fong of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and although it is not overtly about occupational health and safety (OHS), the high risk nature of construction makes safety inseparable from the stories.

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Serious questions raised (again) about the role of safety culture

One of the central tenets of modern safety management is the need to establish a safety culture.  However recent Australian research has cast serious doubt on whether this current belief is valid or useful.

Cover of 10.2-Organisational-CultureIn October 2014, the Safety Institute of Australia launched several new chapters to the Body of Knowledge (BoK) project.  One of those chapters, based on a literature review and authored by David Borys, addresses organisational culture* and says that safety culture:

“… [has] limited utility for occupational health and safety (OHS) professional practice.”

“… literature has unresolved debates and definitional dilemmas.”

“…..remains a confusing and ambiguous concept in both literature and in industry, where there is little evidence of a relationship between safety culture and safety performance.”

These findings should cause all OHS professionals and company executives to re-evaluate the safety culture advice and products that they have received over the last decade.

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What if “reasonably practicable” was applied to a disease outbreak?

There seems to be an increasing trend for the principles of occupational health and safety (OHS) to be applied to matters outside the workplace.  OHS principles were created to reflect the values of society in the 1970s and 80s and, although the laws have changed to reflect economic needs, the principles remain basically the same.  A major legal change has been the move away from preventing harm “at the source” to one of reasonable practicability and this can reduce the overall level of safety available to workers and others.

It is interesting to note that statements on the current Ebola outbreak argue the sense in dealing with the outbreak “at the source”.  Why do we accept a reasonably practicable control measure for harm at work but expect a stronger preventative measure for public health threats?  Shouldn’t we be aiming to reduce all harm “at the source” regardless of the type of harm? Continue reading “What if “reasonably practicable” was applied to a disease outbreak?”

Lack of progress on Safe Work Method Statements shows immaturity

On 27 October 2014 the Safety Institute of Australia, with the support of RMIT University conducted a seminar on safety in the construction industry.  As with the event last year the issue of Safe Work Method Statements (SWMS) dominated the conversation.  The same frustrations were expressed as last year – SWMS are too big and complex, they are demanded for tasks they are not legislatively required for, they are rarely read, they are rarely reviewed and they are written only in English.  What was missing was an indication of  who is (over)demanding SWMS and why.

The seminar contained one client representative experienced in major construction projects who said that he was not directly involved with SWMS as the contract demands only that work is undertaken safely with predetermined levels of risk and reward.  That level of safety may or may not involve the use of SWMS – SWMS were not prescribed.

He did not review SWMS unless there was a specific reason and most of the time there was not.  It could be argued that too much involvement by the client in how the project is to be completed implies a shared OHS responsibility with the client, changing the client/contractor relationship.

One construction industry representative said that they have been able to reduce the number of SWMS to around twenty types for each of the active construction projects.  This has been achieved by limiting the SWMS to the 19 high risk tasks identified in safety legislation.  It was significant that this perspective came from the top-level of construction companies, the Tier Ones.

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New workplace bullying evidence

There have been many claims of a workplace bullying epidemic in Australia but there has always been a lack of evidence. Research has been targeted into specific industry sectors or regions but broad ranging studies have been few. This lack of evidence was a major frustration for the Parliamentary Inquiry into Workplace Bullying that concluded in late 2012. However useful evidence is beginning to appear.

A recent edition of the Journal of Health Safety and Environment included a report (subscribers only) entitled “The prevalence and nature of bullying: A national study of Australian workers”. The authors, Dr Sarven McLinton, Maureen Dollard, Michelle Tuckey and Tessa Bailey, wrote that the study

“… shows that nearly 7% of Australian workers reported bullying and harassment in the past six months.” (page 283)

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