New ISO risk management standard

I am old enough to remember the world of management before it had a risk management standard.  In fact I was studying risk management in OHS when the Australian Standard 4360 was released.  It substantially changed the way OHS was managed in Australia (and lined the pockets of the publishers).  It increased the significance of management standards beyond Quality and helped considerably in progressing an integrated approach to managing a broad range of workplace risks.

[The process also instilled in me a distrust of the standards development process when I sat through a seminar from one of the risk management standards committee members where he spruiked a PC-based management system that “anticipated” the new standard…….. at $30,000 setup fee???  Clearly in this case, and I have been told in almost all cases, the participants always have one eye on the commercial benefits of participation]

Grant Purdy recently discussed the new international risk management standard ISO 31000:2009.  At one of his presentations he said that the new standard has a definition of risk that “shifts the emphasis from “the event” to “the effect” and, in particular, the effect on objectives.”

The previous risk management standard overlapped with auditable elements in other management standards – OHS, environment, and quality.  This new definition may cause problems across these sectors.

Purdy said that risk is now not only perceived as a negative.

“Risk has in th past been regarded solely as a negative concept….[but] it is now recognised that risk is simply a fact of life that cannot be avoided or denied.”

He speaks of the traditional way of measuring risk as sometimes creating “phantom risks” due to an overstated likelihood.  This seems particularly relevant to OHS and may be part of the reason that some OHS issues are seen as excessive or, at worst, a joke.

Purdy stated that there are 11 statements of effective risk management. [Modern management writers love numbers.  I should write a book called “The hundredth time I have had to sit through a numbered list of strategies at conferences before walking out”]  The statements are that risk management

  • creates and protects value
  • is an integrated part of all organisational processes
  • is part of decision making
  • explicitly addresses uncertainty
  • is systematic, structure and timely
  • is based on the best available information
  • is tailored
  • takes human and cultural factors into account
  • is transparent and inclusive
  • is dynamic, iterative and responsive to change
  • facilitates continual improvement of the organisation.

The implementation of this standard and other international standards is going to be confusing, initially, for Australian managers but the choice is easy.  Why follow an Australian standard that needs explaining overseas when there is already an international standard that requires no explanation?  Go global and expand your auditing and accountability options.

[Please note that ISO31000 is not an auditable standard but I suspect you will not have to wait long for one.]

Kevin Jones


Imminent release of OHS model law draft

In the film Mrs Doubtfire,  it was said that her husband’s concept of foreplay was “Effie, brace yourself.”  Australian safety professionals should follow Mr Doubtfire’s advice for, according to a media release from Safe Work Australia:

The Safe Work Australia Council met in Sydney today (18 September 2009) to consider a suite of draft documents on model occupational health and safety (OHS) legislation.

Mr Tom Phillips, Safe Work Australia Council Chair, said that this was a significant development in the harmonisation of OHS laws around Australia.

The Council agreed to recommend to the Workplace Relations Ministers’ Council (WRMC) that it approve the release of a suite of documents for a public comment period of six weeks.

“We have reached a key milestone proving Safe Work Australia is on track to deliver national OHS laws by December 2011,” said Mr Phillips.

The documents to be made available for public comment will include an exposure draft of the model OHS Act, discussion paper, key administrative Regulations and the consultation Regulation Impact Statement.

To continue the Doubtfire analogy, let’s look forward to the post-coital glow of legislative harmony, industrial peace and safe workplaces.

Kevin Jones

[Note: the original book, Madame Doubtfire by Anne Fine, is very funny too but in a less Robin-Williams sort of way. KJ]

Nursing home OHS – a 2001 interview with Kathleen Rockefeller

The last time I spoke with Kathleen Rockefeller was in 2001 on the eve of her speaking at a conference organised by the Ergonomics Society of Australia.  At that time Kathleen was a physical therapist and ergonomist within the Washington State Department of Labour & Industries.  Her latest profile says that she is now in Florida (via Chicago) as an Assistant Professor at the School of Physical Therapy & Rehabilitation Sciences at University of South Florida.

Rockefeller interview 2001_Page_1Kathleen’s career may have progressed (as probably has her tan) but the hazards and control solutions that we discussed in 2001, sadly remain relevant.  I have reproduced some of the interview I conducted with Kathleen in those early days when no-lift policies were radical and  patient-handling equipment was expensive and rare.

SAW: Around the world the no-lift policy is being introduced but why is that policy the most popular risk control measure?

KR: I don’t know where it actually originated or where the term “no-lift” came from. It’s a horrible term because everyone in healthcare knows that it is a little unrealistic. I think some people have been turned off by the name. I prefer to call it “low-lift” or “minimal-lift”.

Looking at the literature and research clearly shows that decreasing the amount of times per day that the human body has to act like a derrick is a good idea. Each episode exposes the body to forces of a magnitude high enough to potentially be injurious. Anyone who has nursed or worked in nursing homes knows that lifting is not the only activity that carries physical risk. There are tasks like leaning over the bed to delivering treatment to changing clothing, repositioning—these activities can be stressful as well. I wish it were simple to say “let’s get rid of the lifting” but it is an important first step.

SAW: In Australia the no-lift push came from the unions in order to push management to get into action on a whole range of manual handling issues.

KR: I’ve heard a rumour over here, and I don’t know how true it is, that the equipment manufacturers began using the term “zero-lift” but I really don’t know.

SAW: Your research shows that financial incentives were used to encourage the purchasing of new equipment. Were the incentives really necessary?

KR: Washington State is unique in the US in that the workers compensation insurance is handling by a State agency. So the insurance is handled by us unless the company meets the requirements for self-insurance. The agency has monitored the data and monitored the trends to try some initiatives with a number of different industries, nursing homes were chosen for a research project. They were hurting financially. A major reason for not buying lifting equipment was financial.

The agency decided to allocate some of their funds to the nursing home industry and to see if offering some of the funds allocated for injury prevention projects would help. The funds weren’t handouts but discounts on the workers’ compensation premium in return for investing in equipment and beginning a manual handling improvement process. The program was designed as a trial project to see what effect this type of incentive might have.

SAW: How applicable is your research to other States, given Washington’s unique processes?

KR: Many recommendations will be applicable as the program wasn’t just on the financial incentives. The study was a state-wide and industry wide look at how nursing homes were doing overall in implementing zero-lift programs. The research has identified the problems of implementing a large-scale intervention and we can all learn from these problems.

SAW: Other than manual handling what are the major OHS risks in nursing homes?

KR: Of course, patient handling has various tasks and the higher risks are certainly the physical transferring but also the repositioning, delivering incontinence care to residents, changing their clothing. The other thing I noticed in the homes while following nursing assistants and doing sampling is the total amount of time they stand or walk. I think that fatigue must be a contributing factor, both local muscle and total-body fatigue. There is very little recovery time. I knew this already but doing the research really emphasised this.

SAW: Did you observe a high stress level? Was resident violence an issue?

KR: Those are certainly issues as well. The issues of staffing and turnover is huge. The turnover for nursing assistants is an industry average of 100% a year and can go much higher. The constant turnover creates turmoil.

An unexpected element was the huge turnover in management personnel. This was striking. When you think of a facility trying to keep stable processes and procedures and the head person leaves within 3 years or even one year— that is a real problem.

I heard a lot from the nursing assistants and through the literature about the importance of knowing the residents. You mentioned potential problems with the residents but if you work with the resident for a while you get to know them and then you may be able to pick up warning signs on behaviour. If you’re a short term agency nurse and you don’t know the residents, it may increase your vulnerability.

SAW: Perhaps the no-lift policy has been introduced due to the throughput of staff rather than dealing with a root cause of the manual handling injuries? Perhaps because no-lift can give immediate results?

KR: Expecting a zero-lift program to have miraculous results in light of these other issues leading to instability is an unreal unrealistic expectation. I think introducing the program and getting it to work as best you can while at the same time, people who can affect change, maybe us baby boomers, need to start screaming very loudly because our parents are next.

Injuries related to manual handling have a number of causes and efforts to decrease these injuries require multi-faceted approaches. The point is well taken because if you are going to expect a zero-lift program in itself to have miraculous results in light of these other issues leading to problems and instability, it is not a realistic expectation.

Kevin Jones

Alarming statistics on young workers and compensation

Safe Work Australia has issued some important statistical reports on workplace injury statistics.  One statistic, in particular, stood out:

“…young workers aged 15 to 24 incurred much higher rates of injury than other age groups and were the least likely to apply for workers compensation”

The injury statistic is not surprising and is consistent with other data but why are young workers “least likely to apply for workers compensation”?  Are they unaware of their rights?  Do they work in a situation where claiming compensation is taboo?  Is illiteracy a deterrent?  Has their employer deterred them from applying?  Is their type of work illegal, casual, or in the black market?

SafetyAtWorkBlog asked Safe Work Australia, if not through workers compensation, how are young people funding their medical/rehabilitation costs.  A spokesperson provided the following non-age specific response:

“We are unable to provide an answer to this question as the data has not been analysed separately by age.

However, the last section of the report on workers’ compensation applications shows the various forms of financial assistance that all injured workers used.

For all injured workers, 34% received workers’ compensation, 39% did not access any financial assistance (these were mostly injuries involving no time lost from work) and the remaining 27% did access some form of assistance. Within this latter group regular sick leave was the most common.

Of the injured employees who did not access workers’ compensation, 18% used their regular sick leave, 9% accessed Medicare or other social security benefits, 7% had costs paid by their employer, 5% used other resources such as money from family and friends while 4% access private health insurance or income protection insurance.

Respondents to the survey could select more than one response to this question.”

Inverting some of these stats raises some concerns. (Please note that statistics is not the strongest skill of SafetyAtWorkBlog, so please correct any issues through the comments section below).

For all injured workers, 66% did not receive workers compensation. This should be a big red flag to OHS regulators and deserves more analysis.

Of the 66% over half  (57%) funded their injuries without recourse to health insurance, sick leave, employer contributions, support from family or friends, Medicare or social security.  Expanding the young worker question above to workers generally, how are these injured workers funding their rehabilitation from outside the regulated and social support mechanisms?

Some years ago SafetyAtWorkBlog attended an international conference on OHS.  There were many people at this Melbourne conference who spoke about the Asian and African countries where injured workers must rely on family, or other social security mechanisms, for an income, as workers’ compensation was non-existent.  This is one element of  economic integration into the Asian region that Australia should not be tolerating.

A spokesperson for Safe Work Australia told SafetyAtWorkBlog (read slowly as there are numbers involved):

“The survey estimated that 689,500 workers were injured at work during 2005-06. Of these, 625,900 were employees and hence eligible for workers’ compensation. However, 388,100 did not apply for compensation and 23,800 applied but did not receive compensation.

This means that 66% of injured employees did not receive compensation. While this equates to 60% of injured workers not receiving compensation it is not correct to use this figure as 12% of workers were not eligible for it.

Looking only at the 411 900 injured employees who did not apply for workers’ compensation

  • 75,700 accessed regular sick leave
  • 30,100 had their employer pay their costs
  • 35,500 used Medicare/social security
  • 18,200 used private health insurance/ income protection insurance, and
  • 18,700 accessed money from other sources such as family and friends.

Please note that when looking at these figures that 42% of injuries involved no time off from work and hence costs would be very small.

Analysis of additional data from the survey, that has not been included in this round of reports shows that over 60% of injured workers aged 15 to 24 felt their injury was too minor to claim or that they felt it was not necessary to claim. This is double the percentage for all workers. While this may sound like young people had more minor injuries, this is not the case. Young workers had the same proportion of injuries that involved no time off work as the workforce as a whole and the same proportion that involved longer periods of time off from work.”

The last paragraph cycles this article back to the start.

“….over 60% of injured workers aged 15 to 24 felt their injury was too minor to claim or that they felt it was not necessary to claim. This is double the percentage for all workers.“

There is something missing from how OHS is promoted to young workers.  The quote above indicates that young workers know about OHS but do not understand OHS.  But that’s not something that can be provided in a 30 minute TV ad, a medium that young people are increasingly less interested in.

Perhaps, we should be spending less time telling people not to stick their hands in a guillotine and more time empowering them in their workplace rights.

Kevin Jones

The harmonisation challenge in Australia gets more difficult

There are few motivations that are more effective for improving workplace safety than facing a grieving relative.

On 17 September 2009, the impact of the OHS law harmonisation on workers and their families came to the fore in an article in the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) entitled “Deaths at work put sharper focus on liability”.  The workplace support advocates make a clear case for holding those who control the workplace accountable for injuries, illnesses and fatalities that occur in their businesses.

A letter sent to the Federal Minister for Workplace Relations, Julia Gillard, by the Workplace Tragedy Family Support Group reportedly says

”Dealing with a serious injury or the death of a family member is difficult, particularly if there is no sense of justice.  Employees must be able to seek justice against employers who do the wrong thing,” said the conveners’ letter.

Families wanted to know the responsible organisation had been held to account, the letter said.

Justice, but not revenge.  The avoidance of this justice and accountability through companies choosing to go out of business has been highlighted in New South Wales many times, so it is understandable that the reduction of the avenue to pursue justice that may occur in the OHS harmonisation process can generate such letters to politicians.

A significant element in the SMH article is the inclusion of the union perspective.  Trade unions often provide grieving relatives the only support, particularly in the period shortly after a workplace fatality.  And there is the shared grief of losing a loved one and losing an often long-serving union member.

This article and the letter to the Minister add an important emotional and social element to the development of the new national model OHS laws.  Whether the government will incorporate mechanisms to achieve justice in the legislative framework or in secondary processes could give a good indication to the broader political picture of workplace safety over the next decade.

Kevin Jones

Safety Leadership push in Queensland

Expect quite a few OHS statements coming from Australian politicians as the country approaches Safe Work Australia Week in late October 2009.

On 16 September 2009, the Queensland Attorney-General and Minister for Industrial Relations, Cameron Dick, sought support for a

“…groundbreaking new program to reduce workplace deaths and injuries.”

Groundbreaking? Not sure. Perhaps for Queensland.

According to his media statement the “Zero Harm at Work ” program “aims to reduce the shocking number of deaths and injuries in Queensland workplaces.”  Dick goes on to say

“Ensuring safety in the workplace is one of the most important challenges facing industry in Queensland… Every year around 100 Queenslanders are killed at work and 30,000 people suffer serious injuries or work related diseases.  The cost to our State of these tragic deaths and injuries is more than $5 billion a year.  And worst of all, mums, dads, husbands, wives and children are left mourning the family member that never came home from work.”

Dick hits the right targets in the media statement but does safety leadership, particularly these types of programs, stop incidents from occurring in the workplaces?

Or is the effect of these programs to have senior executives feel that they are reducing injuries because they are talking about safety?

SafetyAtWorkBlog has long believed that safety awareness does not necessarily equal the reduction of workplace injury and illness.  “Zero Harm” cannot be achieved without financial cost and it is unclear whether industry is willing to invest the amount of money required to genuinely achieve this aim.

But then if “zero harm” is only a goal, an aspiration, then it doesn’t matter if it is not achieved “at least we tried”.  (Or the total cynic would say “at least the voters saw that we tried”)

There are sure to be more such statements and launches in the next six weeks.  SafetyAtWorkBlog will be looking for evidence not aspirations.

Kevin Jones

When ATV helmets are “best practice”

A recent media statement from the New Zealand Department of Labour on all-terrain vehicle (ATV) safety is annoying and disappointing.

On 15 September 2009, the Palmerston North District Court today fined farmer Trevor Mark Schroder $25,000 and ordered him to pay reparation of $20,000 to his employee John Haar over an  ATV accident on 26 November 2008 that left Mr Haar with serious head injuries.

Dr Geraint Emry, the DoL Chief Adviser for Health and Safety, says

“…Mr Haar was riding an ATV supplied by Mr Schroder when he apparently drove into a wire used to direct cows into specific areas of the farm.  Mr Haar had not been wearing a helmet and the severity of his injuries increased as a consequence.  Nor had he been told that the wire he rode into had been put across the race.”

atvguide2 coverThe statement goes on to state

“The Agricultural Guidelines – Safe Use of ATVs on New Zealand Farms – advise that the wearing of helmets by quad bike riders is considered best practice.”

SafetyAtWorkBlog strongly knows that New Zealand is very active in ATV safety but finds it hard to believe that the “wearing of helmets…is considered best practice”.  This admits that, in using ATVs, personal protective equipment is the best hazard control option available.

The guidelines mentioned above are from 2003 and do mention ROPS:

“Until such time as there is evidence to the contrary, farmers have the right to choose whether or not they fit ROPS to their ATVs.”

The NZ DoL and, by inference, the Chief Adviser are quoting a 2003 guideline as best practice in 2009?!

Relying on helmets may be the reality but is also an admission of defeat with ATV designers and manufacturer.  In many circumstances ATVs cannot be fitted with roll-over protective structures (ROPS) due to the nature of the work – orcharding for example.  But Australia and New Zealand insist on ROPS for tractors, with similar criteria and exceptions to ATVs.

VWA Farm_ROPs coverIn one ROPS FAQ from the NZ DoL it says

“Evidence both in New Zealand and overseas has shown that the risk of injury in a tractor overturn can be substantially reduced when the tractor is fitted with ROPS of the appropriate standard.”

and

“Where the nature of the operation makes it not practical for ROPS to be fitted to an agricultural tractor, then, under the terms of this code of practice, the General Manager, Occupational Safety & Health Service, may issue a notice excluding the tractor from the requirement to have a ROPS.”

Some States in Australia have had rebate schemes for ROPS for many years.

It is suggested that a better level of driver protection from rollovers is evident on forklifts through the use of seatbelt and an integrated protective structure.  Applying logic to safety is fraught with danger but the rollover hazard is the same whether in a warehouse or a paddock and having only a helmet for a forklift driver would be absurd and unacceptable.  Why is only a helmet considered best practice for ATV drivers?

Rather than comparing ATVs to motorcycles as in this 2003 report, the comparison should be between ATVs and tractors or, maybe, forklifts.

The New Zealand Transport Agency says this about ROPS and ATVs in June 2008:

Many ATVs have a high centre of gravity, and are prone to tipping over when cornering or being driven on a slope. Rollover is the leading cause of injury associated with ATVs – riders can be crushed or trapped under an overturned machine.

If you attach a rollover protection structure (ROPS) to your ATV, make sure it’s securely fastened, doesn’t interfere with rider mobility and doesn’t raise the ATV’s centre of gravity. Contact OSH for guidelines on how to fit ROPS safely, and make sure the ROPS is strong enough to protect you.

So why aren’t ROPS considered best practice by the DoL?

The ATV injury case quoted above is unlikely to have occurred if the ATV had some form of structure around the driver or, admittedly, the wire was more visible or known to the driver.  The relevance in this case was that the helmet most probably reduced the severity of the injury but would not have avoided contact with the wire.

Research is occurring on ROPS for ATVs but the rollover hazard has existed for as long as ATVs have existed.  Are ATVs simply unsuitable for the work they are being used for?  Is the design wrong for workplace use?  Are they being advertised or promoted for inappropriate use?  Should farm workers be encouraged legislatively or financially to fit ROPS?  Perhaps the only safe ATV is a tractor?

Is the requirement for ROPS for tractors, but only helmets for ATVs, an acceptable double standard for workplace safety?

Kevin Jones