flexibility – Page 13 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Looking for the causes of workplace harm can change one’s world view

The New York Times reported on 17 May 2010 that psychologists have started considering the causes of workplace stress. About time!

The report says that

“Employees are unhappy about the design of their jobs, the health of their organizations and the quality of their managers..”

and that unhappy workers have a high risk of heart attacks and depression.

The article is principally an interview with the author of a new personnel management book that identifies that performance reviews are a generator of unhappiness and stress. This concept has been circulating for some time and goes part way to making workplaces safer.

Job design, mentioned above, can be broadened to include how people are managed. Personnel management and human resources (HR) are a crucial element of any business but the NYT article indicates a growing realisation that the foundations of this management, how jobs are designed, have generated some of the hazards that HR is now tasked to control. Continue reading “Looking for the causes of workplace harm can change one’s world view”

All exposure standards must consider hours of work

The last sixty years’ of research into the effects of hours of work, shiftwork, associated workload, fatigue and affects on social life and families has produced many findings, but no general detailed agreements. There are interesting debates about who and what to research, what methods to use, what to measure and how to interpret results. In the meantime workers and managers continue to work in difficult circumstances that research suggests has an impact on hormone secretion patterns, and, for example, on cardiac health, gastrointestinal health and breast cancer.

Here are a number of specific statements about hours of work, fatigue and fitness for work. Total agreement on these statements can’t be achieved but they would generally be supported. Continue reading “All exposure standards must consider hours of work”

Employees’ OHS responsibility and working beyond the maximum hours

One of the most powerful motivators for behavioural change in workplaces is the legislative obligation on employees to not put themselves at risk of injury nor to act in such a way as to place others at risk.

Reported in the Australian media on 31 March 2010, Fair Work Australia has ruled that employees in the fruit-picking industry may volunteer for work beyond the standard 38-hour week without receiving penalty rates or overtime. The union movement is understandably concerned about how this financially disadvantages workers and how this ruling may spread beyond the fruit-picking industry.

The ruling allows fruit-pickers to choose to work beyond their regular shifts. Will they be able to work safely? Will they not be fatigued? Will they have sufficient daylight to undertake the tasks safely? Will there be sufficient downtime for workers to recover from a long work day and be fit for work? Could the workers’ choice to undertake additional fruit-picking tasks be a breach of their OHS obligations to look after their own safety, health and welfare?

The employees may choose to ignore their own occupational health for the sake of additional dollars but should they then be eligible for workers’ compensation if the effects of those longer hours are found to have contributed to an injury or illness? Continue reading “Employees’ OHS responsibility and working beyond the maximum hours”

Work/life balance needs to grow into sustainability

Just as government is reigning in the excesses of the financial sector over the last decade or so, there is a strong movement to pull back on the workload excesses. Some of this is through the work/life balance movement.

In terms of occupational health and safety, this movement has a strong base that is reflected in a lot of OHS legislation where individual employees have a responsibility to ensure they are working safely and not putting themselves at risk. This can be a very difficult obligation when one is working in an organisation that does not grant safety or mental health or its social obligations much weight.

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

OHS and workload – follow-up

SafetyAtWorkBlog has had a tremendous response to the article concerning Working Hours and Political Scandal. Below are some of the issues raised in some of the correspondence I have received from readers and OHS colleagues.

The Trade Union Congress Risk e-bulletin has a similar public service/mental health case which has been resolved through the Courts. The site includes links through to other media statements and reports.

Australia’s Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations has launched its work/life balance awards for 2009. The information available on the awards is strongly slanted to a work/family balance which is very different from work/life and excludes employees making decisions for the benefit of their own mental health – a proper work/life balance which is the philosophical basis underpinning OHS legislation. SafetyAtWorkBlog is investigating these awards with DEEWR.

SafeWork in South Australia is working on a code of practice on working hours and has been providing OHS advice on this matter since 2000.

The WA government has had a draft code on working hours for some time.

A legal reader has pointed out that “the 38 hour week issue is not set in stone …[and] is not a maximum for non-award employees.” So expect more industrial relations discussion on that issue over the next two years.

One reader generalised from the Grech case about decision-making at senior levels, a concern echoed by many others.

“The Grech case illustrates the gradual disintegration of effectiveness, and the employee’s own inability to recognise that it is not a personal failing of efficiency, rather an unrecognised systemic risk.

When the employee is at senior level, there is more likelihood there will be poor attention to the warning signs. Any ‘underperformance’ would be seen as a personal failing. For those of us in the safety business, it is obvious that the system itself is in need of urgent risk management.”

There were congratulations from many readers for raising a significant and hidden OHS issue.

“Many people in industry work more than 70 hour a week. This affects their health and personal relationships.”

“Overwork and under-resourcing lead to poor decision making, adverse business outcomes, and in the long term psychological and physical ill health. Both the government and corporate sectors are paying little attention to this issue.”

The workplace hazards resulting from fatigue are being addressed in several industries such as transport, mining and forestry, where attentiveness is hugely important because of the catastrophic consequences of poor judgement.

One of the issues from the Grech case is that the quality of judgement in non-critical, or administrative, occupations can be severely affected by fatigue, mental health and other psychosocial issues. These may not affect the health and well-being of others but can have a significant effect on the individual. OHS does not only deal with systemic or workplace cultural elements but is equally relevant to the individual worker.

Kevin Jones

[Thanks to all those who have written to me and continue to do so. KJ]

New Work/Life Research

There seems to be new institutes and academic schools popping up regularly over research into the issue of work/life balance. Recently one of the oldest and most prominent of the institutes, the Centre for Work + Life at the University of South Australia, released new research data.

The latest Australian Work and Life Index (AWALI) was released in late July 2009. The executive summary identifies several important issues relevant to OHS:

“Three years of data about work-life interference in Australia tell us that many employees experience frequent interference from work in their personal, home and community lives, many feel overloaded at work and feelings of time pressure are also common and growing.”

“Work hours are central to work-life interference….. Many Australians are a long way from their preferred working hours and the 2008/09 economic downturn has not made any difference to the incidence of this mismatch.”

The work by Barbara Pocock and others at the Centre is characterised by recommendations for improvements rather than simply describing a situation. In this data the researchers say

“Our AWALI reports over the past three years suggest that employers and public policy makers can help workers deal with work-life pressures. This involves improving the quality of supervision and workplace culture, controlling workloads, designing ‘do-able’ jobs, reducing long working hours and work-related commuting, increasing employee-centered flexibility and options for permanent part-time work, improving the fit between actual and preferred hours and increasing care supports.”

It is obvious from these comments that OHS professionals need to work hard on these matters to create, or maintain, their workplace safety cultures.

Kevin Jones

Category: flexibility

Looking for the causes of workplace harm can change one’s world view

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All exposure standards must consider hours of work

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Employees’ OHS responsibility and working beyond the maximum hours

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Work/life balance needs to grow into sustainability

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The retention of leave indicates a broken business

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OHS and workload – follow-up

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New Work/Life Research

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