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It’s all about safety

In my 38 years in OHS I have helped my employers cope with the aftermath of 13 fatalities, one case of paraplegia, one major stress case and a very serious burns case. Speaking from personal experience the most devastating thing that can happen to a company and its workers is to have an employee killed or seriously injured. The financial and more importantly humanitarian costs are immense. OHS is a joint responsibility of management and employees. My focus is the prevention of permanently life altering personal damage.

By George Robotham

An extract from ‘Major Safety Technical Lessons Learnt’ by George Robotham.

Induction training

The issue of induction training is a contested one and people have different views on the required content and duration. I have come to realise detailed training is not a good idea for the new starter. They can have a myriad of issues in their mind as they settle into a new job and possibly new house and location and this can decrease their focus on induction training. Starting a new job can be a time of stress and confusion and they can easily become overloaded. I tend to think you need to give them the basic safety essentials to start with and get them back a few weeks after for more detailed training. Essential induction topics need to be revised through the tool-box meeting schedule.

Tool-box meetings

Regular, short, sharp, tool-box meetings can be an excellent means of getting the safety message to employees and resolving safety problems. These talks are a visual commitment to safety, they open lines of communication and help to meet legislative requirements for consultation.

A search of the internet will reveal many sources of packaged, prepared tool box talks, many free. Whilst these have their uses they cannot beat analysing your audience’s needs and presenting something to meet their needs.

Some organisations publish a 6 or 12 month schedule of tool box talks and provide training resource material to supervisors. Tool box talks may also be held prior to undertaking high risk or difficult tasks or when problems are noticed. Some organisations have a quick tool box meeting at the beginning of every shift to discuss the safety implications of the work to be done on that shift.

You must create a no-fear, no-blame environment where people are prepared to honestly speak their mind without fear of recrimination.

Accident ratio studies misdirect safety.

My grandmother used to say “Look after the pence and the pounds will look after themselves”. In the world of traditional safety there seems to be similar thinking that if you prevent minor damage you will automatically prevent major damage. Accident ratio studies (insisting on set ratios between near misses, minor accidents and serious accidents) are prominent and accepted unthinkingly. The much-quoted ‘Iceberg Theory’ in relation to safety does not stand up to scrutiny in the real world! The ‘Iceberg Theory’ is fine if used for statistical description but it cannot be relied upon for statistical inference. (Geoff McDonald)

The result of the ‘Iceberg Theory’ focus is a furious effort to eliminate lost time injuries in the belief that all major incidents will be eliminated in the process. Certainly there are minor incidents that have the potential to result in more extensive damage (and we should learn from them), but personal experience tells me the majority of minor damage incidents do not have this potential. It is a matter of looking at the energy that was available to be exchanged in the incident. The common cold cannot develop into cancer, similarly many minor injuries will never develop into serious personal damage.

The concept that preventing the minor incidents will automatically prevent the major ones seems to me to be fundamentally flawed.

All organisations have limited resources to devote to safety – it seems more efficient to prevent one incident resulting in paraplegia than to prevent 20 incidents where people have a couple of days off work (some will say this comment is heresy)…

Somewhere in the push to reduce L.T.I’s, reduce the L.T.I.F.R. and consequently achieve good ratings in safety programme audits, the focus on serious personal damage tends to be lost.

Auditing

Organisations that are successful at Occupational Health and Safety have regular comprehensive internal and external audits. Standards must be developed for the safety management system, e.g. visitor safety, contractor safety, compliance with statute law, use of personal protective equipment, management commitment, hazard identification/risk assessment, safe working procedures, loss prevention and control, employee involvement, emergency procedures, accident investigation, education/ communication, inspections, health and fitness, injury management and compliance with these standards must be audited. A quality assurance approach where NCR (non-compliance reports) are issued is recommended.

Auditors must receive training by authoritative training professionals, comprehensive auditing guidelines must be developed and formal processes introduced to follow-up on audit recommendations. A criticism of safety audits is that they are usually not based on an examination of serious personal damage occurrences (accidents) experience. After detailed audits it is surprising how many organisations never actually get around to implementing the recommendations.

“People judge you by what they see you doing not by what you say you are doing.”

Meet the author

GEORGE ROBOTHAM

George Robotham’s passion is the reduction of permanently life altering (Class 1) personal damage. George is an accredited workplace health and safety officer and Justice of the Peace. George’s qualifications include Cert. IV T.A.E., Dip. Training & Assessment Systems; Diploma in Frontline Management; Bachelor of Education (Adult & Workplace Education), Queensland University of Technology; Graduate Certificate in Management of Organisational Change, (Charles Sturt University); Graduate Diploma of Occupational Hazard Management), (Ballarat University).

George can be contacted on fgrobotham@gmail.com – he welcomes debate on the above (it would be indeed a boring world if everybody agreed with George.)

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