Tag: Management

The productivity debate in Australia misses the opportunities presented by wellbeing

At the moment Australian business is campaigning on the need to increase productivity rates in Australian workplaces.  It, with the recent support of some State governments and ideological colleagues, is seeking to achieve this by weakening the recent changes to the industrial relations structure encapsulated in the Fair Work Act.  Fair Work Australia, trade unions and industry associations are primarily focussed on the industrial relations elements of this ideological fight over productivity.
Evidence of the potential productivity and economic benefits of improved occupational health and safety has been missing in the debate yet it is this linkage that Dame Carol Black has been talking about recently in Australia.  It seems there is a keen audience for her perspective in Australia as she will be visiting the country four times in 2012.
At a recent OHS conference in Melbourne one speaker said some OHS positions in the United States are being renamed Occupational Health Productivity in recognition of the importance of wellbeing  in the OHS roles.  Renaming “wellbeing” as “productivity” provides a different context to OHS activities and should better gain senior executive attention as it would be easier to see how this activity fits with traditional operational thinking. Continue reading “The productivity debate in Australia misses the opportunities presented by wellbeing”

Han Solo – Risk Manager

“I have a really bad feeling about this“

In Star Wars, Han Solo and other major characters express their gut feeling about various situations.  In traditional risk management parlance, that “gut feeling” would equate to subjectivity, an element of decision-making that needs to be minimised in risk management if not eliminated.  This has been sought through various statistical analysis tools, risk nomograms and rational approaches to risk.  But all decision-making has an element of the emotional, the subjective, the gut-feeling.  This position was emphasised recently in a presentation in an OHS conference by Dr David Brooks who described risk management as an art as well as a science. Continue reading “Han Solo – Risk Manager”

OHS salary survey raises more questions than it answers

The information that safesearch has released on its annual salary survey of Australian OHS professional salaries included several curious statements. In media statements released in mid-February 2012 the following was attributed to an interpretation of the survey results:

“… a brain drain triggered by the mining boom has forced employers in other sectors to increase salaries for safety professionals”

“… it appears that companies [in the mining sector] are now being more strategic in their approach by putting an emphasis on their HR and employee branding strategies rather than simply throwing more dollars at the problem”

“The angst surrounding the failure of OHS harmonisation may be overstated, as findings from the safesearch remuneration survey released today show top safety professionals have other priorities….. The majority of respondents said the biggest issue facing organisations was the difficulty in driving the Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) message to all levels of organisations, to promote safety culture and leadership commitment to HSE.”

Brain Drain

It has certainly been the case that Australia’s mining boom has created a shortage of skilled workers.  Whether this has extended to HSE professionals is uncertain. Continue reading “OHS salary survey raises more questions than it answers”

The social context of OHS laws is being poorly handled

Australian lawyer Michael Tooma is mentioned regularly in the SafetyAtWorkBlog, mostly because Tooma is one of the few who consider workplace safety in the broader social context.  In The Australian newspaper on 10 February 2012 Tooma wrote that new work health and safety laws being introduced in Australia present

“…a march … into the traditional heartland of the public safety, product safety and professional liability territory, and it brings with it a criminalisation of what was once an exclusively civil liability domain.  The new laws did not invent this trend, they just perfected it.”

Right-wing commentators would jump on this and declare “nanny state” but it is vitally important to note that this trend of “protectionism”, or the “compensation culture” as described in the United Kingdom, did not originate in occupational health and safety (OHS) laws.  The OHS profession, business operators and workers will need to learn to accommodate and manage this social trend that has been imposed.

Tooma writes that ”

“…we have not had a proper debate about the incursion of the laws into nontraditional areas and its impact on the resources of firms, regulators and ultimately work safety standards.”

The debate may already be over. Continue reading “The social context of OHS laws is being poorly handled”

The lobbying for “control” impedes corporate and OHS growth

“When we look at global trends it’s clear that Australia’s labour laws are not the primary cause of the contraction in manufacturing.”

Shelley Marshall, a Monash University researcher and Fair Wear Australia spokesperson made this statement at an Australian Senate inquiry on 2 February, 2012.  The statement, reported in The Australian Financial Review (not available online), was used to illustrate the complexities of outworker protections under the Fair Work Act but it is, occasionally, worth looking a broader context.  If one accepts that workplace safety is a subset of industrial relations laws (as SafetyAtWorkBlog does), Marshall’s comments help cut through some of the recent hyperbole from the industry associations and lobbyists about the significant economic and productivity costs of OHS law reform.

Marshall identified the extension of supply chains as affecting productivity.  The issue of supply chain responsibility has an established OHS context as it relates to the issue of “control”, a matter raised as an objection to the implementation of new Work Health and Safety laws.  Continue reading “The lobbying for “control” impedes corporate and OHS growth”

UK’s approach to OHS reform is flawed by short-term political strategy

England’s Prime Minister, David Cameron, has described OHS as a “monster” in a speech to small business owners on 5 January 2012. It is important to note the PM’s comments prior to his monster reference that have not been repeated in the mainstream press. He refers to

“… a great big machine of health and safety that has built up over years.”

Cameron feels that he needs to address an OHS regulatory system and enforcement strategies that have become too complex for, particularly, small business to comply with. Part of his solution is to exempt the self-employed, in some specific sectors, from OHS laws. This is a questionable decision as it effectively establishes a two-tier safety management regime and sets a precedent for other similar sectors to lobby for an exemption from other, perceived, onerous laws.

It may be that OHS laws in the UK have become overly complicated over time but the role of the media must be considered in that it has focussed on many absurd managerial decisions that have resulted from a skewed understanding of OHS and risk. Frequently the media reports have no relation to OHS laws and all to do with an increasing litigious society and the pursuit of money through, potentially spurious, public liability insurance claims.

In the 5 January 2012 speech Cameron states that

“…the key about health and safety is not just the rules and the laws and the regulations – it is also the culture of fear many businesses have about health and safety.” (emphasis added)

Cameron explains his answer for reducing this fear of health and safety, the capping of fees that lawyers can earn from legal action against businesses on behalf of their clients, usually, employees. There is no fear of health and safety, it is a fear of litigation. Cameron is not on about OHS law reform, his concern is about “unnecessary” litigation costs. This is unlikely to be reduced by cutting the budget of the Health & Safety Executive (HSE) which must reduce services as the HSE resources have been contracting for some time. Continue reading “UK’s approach to OHS reform is flawed by short-term political strategy”

Disagreement on workplace bullying strategy increases in Australia

According to The Australian newspaper on 5 January 2012 the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) is extremely critical of Safe Work Australia’s draft Code of Practice on Workplace Bullying. The ACTU has said that the draft code has a “fundamental flaw”

“… the failure to address workplace bullying in the same framework as any other workplace hazard/risk.”

This is a significant challenge but without access to the ACTU submission on the draft code it is difficult to determine the exact context of this fundamental flaw.

Of more concern is the apparent move by the ACTU, according to The Australian, to have single instances of inappropriate behavior covered by the workplace bullying code. This is contrary to the bullying concept that only repeated instances of abuse should be considered bullying.

Regardless of this challenge to established definitions, it is very hard to see how such a situation could be enforced by either OHS representatives or OHS regulators. The regulators have struggled for years with the existing definition and could have no effective role in workplaces if the unions’ wishes were successful. Continue reading “Disagreement on workplace bullying strategy increases in Australia”

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