Challenges
for Occupational Health & Safety in Australia- 2005-George Robotham
Abstract
This paper explores
the author’s beliefs about the Occupational Health & Safety (OHS) challenges
facing
Introduction
In a
private communication a senior executive of a multi-national company said “Your
paper is an endorsement of what X company is trying to do. Fatalities and permanently disabling injuries must be
the primary focus of our safety efforts. System development/enhancement and
behaviour modification must have the elimination of your Class 1 accidents as
the primary focus”
Quotable Quote
"A
health & safety problem can be described by statistics but cannot be
understood by statistics. It can only be understood by knowing and feeling the
pain, anguish, and depression and shattered hopes of the victim and of wives,
husbands, parents, children, grandparents and friends, and the hope, struggle
and triumph of recovery and rehabilitation in a world often unsympathetic,
ignorant, unfriendly and unsupportive, only those with close experience of life
altering personal damage have this understanding"
There are far too many people who have their
life permanently altered (terminated or impaired) in
Georg Christoph Licthenstein (1742-1799) is
reported to have said “I cannot say whether things will get better if we
change, what I can say is that they must change to get better” If we do not
change the things we are currently doing in safety in
Author’s background
This presentation is
based on over thirty years experience in varied safety roles in a variety of
industries, exposure to Australian and overseas commercial Safety Management
Systems, exposure to an international safety benchmarking study, tertiary and
non-tertiary training in OHS and other disciplines, networking with many safety
professionals, working with hard-nosed ,productivity driven managers, being
strongly influenced in the author’s safety career by Geoff McDonald and wide
reading of Australian and overseas safety publications.
Despite this experience the author is not confident he has a good handle on how to develop an effective Safety Management System.
The following is what
the author believes are the challenges for OHS in
Major
Challenge 1 –Absence of a scientific discipline
Several
areas indicate the lack of a scientific discipline in safety
Concepts
Models
Terminology
Probably
the best example of a lack of scientific discipline lies in the terminology
“accident”
The
term “accident” implies carelessness (whatever that means), lack of ability to
control its causation, an inability to foresee and prevent and a personal
failure. How can we make meaningful progress on a major cost to Australian
industry if we persist with such, sloppy, unscientific terminology? The term “accident” affects how the general population perceives
damaging occurrences and the people who suffer the personal damage, inferring
the event is “an act of god” or similar event beyond the control and
understanding of mere mortals.
The
term “accident” is best replaced by the term “personal damage occurrence”.
Instead of talking about “permanent disability” we should be talking about
“life-altering personal damage”
There is a poor understanding in the community of the reasons why personal damage occurs. We are quick to make the assumption that the worker was careless, when one examines personal damage carefully one will also identify a range of work system factors that contributed to the personal damage as well. Most of these work system factors are the responsibility of the employer at both common and statute law. Blaming workers for their careless behavior is an emotionally appealing approach that is usually not all that productive in the bigger picture of preventing personal damage at work
Major Challenge 2- Focus on the Personal Damage Phenomenon
The single biggest problem in safety in
1.
Damage to people at work has a
number of adverse outcomes:-
§ Financial loss to employer, worker and community
§ Pain and suffering
§ Dislocation of lives
§ Permanence of death
If you look at the personal damage from the perspective of the damaged individual you will see all of the above. If you look from the perspective of the employer you see 30 % of the financial cost but virtually nil of the other. Some realization of the permanence of death may occur but this is rare.
2. Damage to people from work falls naturally into one of three Classes.
- Class I damage permanently alters the person’s life and subdivides into
- fatal
- non fatal
- Class II damage temporarily alters the person’s life
- Class III damage temporarily inconveniences the person’s life
3. In 1995 the Industry Commission (part of federal treasury) estimated the financial loss in 1992-93 from work damage to people at $20 billion. They did not cost pain and suffering, dislocation of lives or permanence of death.
The Industry Commission figures can be translated as follows.
82%
Class
I Fatal 1.5% )
Non-fatal 80.5% )
Class II 18%
Class III not costed
Class I non-fatal costs were made up of 58% permanently incapacitated people who did not work again (53 damaged per day) and 22.5% who returned to work and worked for a lesser income, fewer hours or lower skilled work (84 per day).
The major significance of work damage to people is the extent to which it damages lives. 137 people per day (50,000 per year) had their lives permanently altered by damage from work in 1992-93. This group accounts for 80.5% of the financial loss, the major amount of pain and suffering and of dislocation of lives. It accounts for the largest quantity of damage from work and along with Class I Fatal should be the major target for control activity.(Geoff McDonald & Associates)
Focus on Class 1 Damage
The report of the Industry Commission 1995 indicates that safety in Australia is fundamentally a Class 1 problem (87% of occurrences were Class 2 with18% of cost, 13% of occurrences were Class 1 with 82% of cost) This report further strengthens the argument that instead of concentrating on reducing the number of Lost Time Injuries we should be focusing on Class 1 damage reduction. (Geoff McDonald & Associates, Brisbane)
Quote from Geoff McDonald “On each day of 1992-93, 7 days a week, 52 weeks of the year, 137 workers had their lives permanently altered (non-fatally) by damage from work.
Class I Damage - permanently alters a life - fatally or
- non-fatally
Class II Damage - temporarily alters a life
Class
|
|
Percent
of Total Costs
|
||
|
|
Class I fatal
|
Class I non-fatal
|
Class II
|
|
1981-82 (G L McDonald 1984) |
70 - 85 |
15
- 30 |
|
|
1992-93 (Industry Commission 1995) |
1.5 |
80.5 |
18 |
|
2000-01 (NOHSC 2004) |
3.5 |
88.5 |
8 |
|
Add cost of pain, suffering and early
death |
6.5 |
90.0 |
3.5 |
|
NSW Change in
Incidence (number per 1000 workers) |
|||
|
|
91-92 to
00-01 |
10 Year Change Rate
|
Costs
|
|
|
|
-31% |
6.5% |
|
Class I non-fatal |
|
+140% |
90.0% |
|
|
|
-35% |
3.5% |
|
|
|
2000-01 Total
$82.8 billion |
|
As
a boy I remember my Grandfather Alexander Nixon explaining, “It’s a poor man
who cannot use his own money and someone else’s too.” He borrowed money and founded what would
become, in the next generation, “
It is an ill-informed man who cannot use his own experience and someone else’s too.
Grandfather could go to a bank which had collected and stored money and made it available to enable progress. In Work Health and Safety, there is no bank. No one has collected and made available adequate data on Class I non-fatal damaging occurrences.
By government decree and inaction, we struggle in information darkness and feel our way by “risk assessment” which splatters attention and effort rather than brings the directed focus that comes with an adequate knowledge of Class I damage.
Without a veridical information bank on Class I damaging occurrences, very very few, if any of us, can become a “Smart Alex”.”
What is done in safety must be based on a thorough knowledge of what happens in a damaging occurrence .Because the National Experience has not been collected we do not know what to do. . (Geoff McDonald & Associates, Brisbane)
We must put a major focus on the personal damage phenomena if we are going to improve.
Far too much of what we do in safety and
are taught to do is based on gut-feeling, mythology and folk-lore instead of
scientific facts gained from actual damaging occurrences.
Major Challenge 3- Process vs. Content
Managing many issues in life requires use
of both process and content. Many of the safety processes used in
Major Challenge 4-The Two
Mandorlas
Mandorla it the Italian word for almonds, in common usage it describes the overlapping area of two circles.In safety there are two important Mandorlas. One, the Paradox Mandorla, represents the situation that there are far too many fatalities and permanent disabilities but these occurrences are so rare in an individual’s experience that individuals lack both the motivation to make changes and the knowledge of what changes to make.
Figure 1 – Paradox Mandorla
The second, the Judgement Mandorla, represents the thinking and the feeling function, both of which are used to make judgements which lead to action. The thinking function involves the linking up of ideas by means of a concept and/or the use of concepts to integrate new ideas into an already linked up set (constellated, organised group) of ideas. Thinking is concerned with “truth” which is necessary if the physical energies of the world are to be controlled to avoid damaging people. The feeling function uses sub-emotional feelings via values to make judgements of the form “like or dislike”, “acceptable or not acceptable”, and is essentially concerned with “goodness”.
Feeling corrupts Thinking (eg. by using value laden terms) and Thinking corrupts Feeling (eg. by attempting to rationalise how you feel). Inappropriate judgements come from corrupting one function with the other, or by using the wrong function, (eg. lack of factual information with which to think will lead to a feeling judgement).
Figure 2 – Judgement Mandorla
At present the Paradox Mandorla is very thin and the Judgement Mandorla is very fat. For effective and efficient safety at work The Paradox Mandorla needs to be fat and the Judgement Mandorla needs to be thin.
Thinking Judgements (truth) and Feeling Judgements (goodness) are both necessary, each in their own domain.
The use of the wrong function or the simultaneous use of both corrupts judgement and renders it counter productive. The large Mandorla represents the large amount of corrupted judgement which exists at present.(Geoff McDonald & Associates)
It would be instructive to examine the progress of other disciplines such as medicine in the context of this model, eg. With real progress based on understanding disease being based on environmental and constitutional conditions rather than “goodness” or “badness”
The discussion above once again emphasises the importance on basing actions on solid damaging occurrence information. At the moment many decisions on safety are based on the feeling function because we do not have solid factual data to guide the thinking function.
Lesser
Challenge 1- Will it Work in the Real World?
As a young, keen corporate Safety Adviser the author used to arrive at a certain mine-site with the latest corporate safety approach and was greeted by the mine Safety Adviser with the question “Will this work in the real world?”
The following is a very important message to those leading OHS Change.
Far too often what happens in safety is the result of management deliberations on the problem without input from the workforce. Ignore worker input at your peril.
The
author has had a number of occasions when he has spoken to managers about how
safety is managed in their facility and left the top office with a warm
inner-glow after the managers telling him what a great job they do on safety. He
has then examined the implementation of the safety programme in the real world
and gained a vastly different perspective. Fancy professionally printed safety
policies and procedures, incorporated in the Quality Assurance system and found
in the supervisor and managers office do not impress the author, what happens where
the action happens is the real test of the safety programme
Far too many safety
changes are a theoretical exercise that bears very little relationship to what
is actually required to make a difference in the workplace. Too much of safety
is also buried in political-correctness, paper-work, bureaucracy and arrogance
of those leading the changes. Managing safety is not something you do from a
desk.
Lesser Challenge 2 - De-emphasise the Lost Time
Injury Frequency Rate
The
author’s personal experience in safety roles in Australian industry tells him
it is difficult to make meaningful progress in safety when one has a focus
principally on Lost Time Injuries.
This
statement may upset those with a traditional approach to safety, given the
enormous cost of occupational personal damage in
On
“The Moura experiences cast doubt on the often
repeated claim that a good LTIFR indicates that safety is being well managed.”
Further comment is “On the contrary, the danger is that a single-minded focus
on reducing the LTIFR leads systematically to the neglect of catastrophic risk”
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 Class 1 personal damage tends to be lost.
Reducing the L.T.I.F.R. is as much about introducing rehabilitation programmes and making the place an enjoyable place to work as it is about reduction of personal damage. (Geoff McDonald &Associates, Brisbane)
Lesser
Challenge 4- Risk Assessment
The
author has trained many people in basic risk assessment over the last 15 years
and one thing he has noticed is that if you set a number of people or teams the
task of carrying out a risk assessment on the same risk you often end up with
differing risk scores. This has to say something about the reliability and
validity of the risk assessment process. Some people say you can remove this
variation with better training, but the author does not agree. The basic
problem is that we all bring different training and experience to the risk
management process and our perceptions of risk will naturally vary.
The
author has been impressed by methods such as hazop,
F.M.E.A., fault-tree analysis and so on but methods using a simple matrix and /
or nomogram make the author
wonder about the reliance that seems to be placed upon them.
The
basic risk assessment process requires one to make an estimate of Probability,
Consequence and in some cases Exposure. This process could best be described in
practice as a S.W.A.G. (Scientific Wild-Arsed Guess).Just
think how powerful the risk assessment process could be if there was solid data
to use in the calculations. The author has seen complex risk management processes
that have impressed him but the simple risk assessment process that is
practiced in many organisations strikes the author as being very unreliable.
There
is a great reliance on risk assessment in the safety profession, is this
confidence justified without solid personal damage data?
Lesser Challenge 5 -Behaviour vs. Engineering
The Report of the Industry Commission into Work Health & Safety (1995, xx ) says
"The key to controlling injury and disease at work is to be found in the design and control of the workplace and the activities conducted within it. Only very limited control, if any, control is possible by focusing on the behaviour of those who may be injured."
In the Industry Commission report (1995, 121) McDonald & Associates state
"Historically too much reliance has been placed on behaviour control and too little on organising the work methods, environment and equipment to allow for the realities of human behaviour"
In the Industry Commission Report (1995, 5, sub 132) Dr. Wigglesworth supported a preventative approach based on workplace systems rather than human behavior.
"One of the basic principles of the management of other public health problems is that passive countermeasures, which apply equally to all persons at risk without their active involvement are more effective than those that are active, that is which requires some component of human behavior."
Bearing the above discussion in mind the author is of the opinion that a necessary part of safety management is that all levels of employees have detailed safety responsibilities and that they act according to those responsibilities. The author has been told by safety professionals whose thoughts he values that Dupont safe behaviour programmes are of considerable benefit. The author is not in a position to comment.
Both the engineering and behavioural approaches have their strengths and weaknesses; the wise manager uses the strengths of each without being led astray by the weaknesses. Keep in your mind the aim of our safety efforts is positive change for the future.
Lesser Challenge 6- Tertiary OHS Training
In the early
1980’s the author attended tertiary OHS training at a
The author has some doubts post-graduate Occupational Health and Safety education at universities really equips the graduate to perform well in what can be an extremely demanding role. Detailed training on how to establish a safety management system seems to be a difficult area for training organisations to come to grips with. An effective safety professional needs many skills over and above the technical skills found in most OHS courses.
There are many excellent people working hard to develop tertiary OHS training courses. The author’s studies in Adult & Workplace Education has emphasised the necessity of carrying out a detailed training needs analysis to guide course development, the author is unaware of whether this thorough training needs analysis has been carried out.
Tertiary OHS training suffers badly from the lack of detailed incident data; currently people are being taught what we think they need to know because we do not have hard scientific data to guide our thinking in an accurate manner.
When the author studied Adult & Workplace Education he noted the significant body of research knowledge that was available. A similar depth of knowledge does not appear to be available in the Safety side of Occupational Health & Safety.
Conclusions
There are far too many people who have their
life permanently altered (terminated or impaired) in
There are many
dedicated people working hard to address OHS in
We need a two tiered approach, one at the collective level for governments to change the way they report and educate on safety and one at the individual level where we, as safety professionals, should seek facts to support our strategies.
We must start to base what we do in safety on solid damaging
occurrence data if we are to improve- a National Class 1 damage data base
should be a Government priority.
References
Hopkins,
A., (2001) Managing Major Hazards,
Allen & Unwin,
Industry
Commission (1995), Work, Health &
Safety-Inquiry into Occupational Health and Safety, Report No. 47,
Australian Government Publishing Service,
McDonald G. (2001) Work Damage to People as yet unpublished manuscript, Geoff McDonald & Associates, Brisbane
McDonald,G.,(2003), Submission to the Productivity Commission enquiry, “National Workers Compensation and Occupational Health & Safety Frameworks”
Wigglesworth, E,(1985),Occupational Accidents and Injuries, Community Health Studies, Vol IX, Number 1
Wigglesworth,
E., (1995) Page 5, subs 132 in Work,
Health and Safety-Inquiry Into Occupational Health and
Safety" Industry Commission, Australian Government Publishing Service,