A Positive Health and Safety Culture:
Organisations are said to require a positive health and safety for it to be effective.
What is a positive health and safety culture?
There have been many articles published, over the years about positive health and safety cultures and what they involve.
This article goes into what I have observed at the many companies where I have worked, explains some of the theory and what components are required for a positive health and safety culture.
Accident Prevention:
Herbert Heinrich was an American Safety Pioneer, he said only a very small percentage (~2%) of work related accidents were not preventable. So that means on average 98% of most work place accidents are preventable. I have seen numerous examples of practical evidence to support this theory.
I like a new sound bite, which I have recently heard,
"Nothing that we do at work is worth hurting someone for!"
Is that true well? Well I think so. Why would you want to harm someone, when there are so many ways these days to prevent serious accidents?
Even the emergency services can put reasonable safeguards in place to protect emergency services personnels health and safety.
Is it worth carrying out high risk fire fighting activities to save a building in which all workers are known to have safely evacuated? Well a high profile case in Warwickshire, in which 4 fire fighters were killed says no! Senior managers from Warwickshire Fire and Rescue were prosecuted for this incident.
Priorities in any emergency, should always be:
1- Human Life- Cause No Harm
2- The Environment- Cause No Pollution
3- Profit or Property- Cause No Damage
Human Life must always be put ahead of company profit!
No reasonable employer would send a worker on a "suicide mission" to repair a factory or office roof, but it may be reasonable for a "very high risk" mission, for example, for armed special forces to arrest or neutralise a brutal dictator, who is carrying out mass genocide! I can't think of many other scenarios which a very high risk task, would be acceptable, in a standard workplace, can you?
In a legal test case recently the Ministry of Defence were told it had a "duty of care" to provide the best possible safety equipment to armed forces personnel, so far as is reasonably practicable, even in a war zone, after a number of soldiers were killed in snatch Land-rovers or without bullet proof vests. Previously the MOD had been exempt from most H&S legislation, once in a war zone.
A No Blame Culture: is very important in an organisation, which aims to promote a positive health and safety culture.
By a no blame culture, it means a culture in which people who make errors, even if they resulted in relatively serious consequences are not blamed or punished, as a result of an incident.
It is more important to learn from these errors, to help prevent more serious incidents from occurring, than it is to apportion blame.
Everyone who works for a living makes errors, it's a fact of life. I remember an old saying which I was told when I first started work, "only those who do nothing, don't make mistakes!"
There is a difference though between an error, or an error of judgement and gross negligence!
Many health and safety studies have proven that a no blame culture is an essential part of a positive health and safety culture. You are never going to hear about the errors, if someone feels they will always be disciplined or punished.
Disciplinary action should be a last resort or as a result of gross negligence, on the workers part.
Carrying out tool box talks, additional training, face to face discussions, to understand why an error was made and enforce the companies arguments for using effective safety procedures, should all be used before considering any form of disciplinary action.
Good Communications: are essential to a develop positive health and safety culture. It is no good putting new procedures and policies into place, if no-one knows about them. H&S Leaflets, E Mails, H&S Notice Boards, H&S bulletins, Company Intranets and H&S committee meetings are all important in communicating with people at all levels within an organisation. Just sending E mails for instance, will only communicate with people who are computer literate and on the E mail system.
Employee Empowerment: all employees, supervisors and managers must be empowered to stop a task which they feel is unsafe, without fear that they will be punished.
The Health and Safety Officer, in particular, must have the power, backed up by senior management, to stop or prevent any activities which they feel are at risk of causing serious harm.
Incident, Near Miss and Unsafe Condition Reporting: A part of the no blame culture and positive health and safety culture is to report and investigate all incidents.
Understanding that there are many factors which lead to an accident is very important, it is rarely just operator error, which cause the most serious accidents, there are usually many underlying and organisational factors, which have contributed to the accident, but these are often ignored.
The domino effect in the diagram below demonstrates that not all errors or unsafe acts result in harm to persons, damage or a loss.
Occasionally though the company social "workplace" environment, an error or fault of by a person (unsafe acts), combined with unsafe conditions "dominoes" into an injury, loss or other harm.
The majority of the time though these bad practices or errors, do not go all the way through to an injury, out of good luck.
Lead by example:
All Directors, Managers and Supervisors should demonstrate the highest of health and safety standards in their personal actions.
It is no good having procedures in place, if senior managers, directors and executives feel that they are exempt from them or don't use them when time is pressing.
An example of poor leadership is a senior manager or director walking around a hard hat site, without wearing any PPE at all. All levels within a company, should observe and enforce the company procedures and encourage others to do so.
If a procedure is in place, use it!
When production is suffering due to a break down, for example, is it worth cutting corners to get back online again? As tempting as it may be, maintenance tasks are relatively high risk compared to the day to day running of a factory or building. Maintenance whether done by a contractor or in house, should always follow your health and safety procedures!
If that doesn't convince you, the uninsured costs of an actual accident, are said to be around ten times (depending on circumstances) of the insured costs. There are many hidden costs associated with an accident, which organisations don't take into account (see diagram below.)
Serious accidents cost a lot of money and most of the costs are uninsurable!
Heinrich/ Bird Safety Triangle and Incident Prevention Strategies:
The ratios vary depend on which statistician quoted them but the ratios quoted below are one of them:
Fatal, Severe or Disabling-1
Lost Time Injuries or First Aid Cases-10
Minor Injury/ Property Damage-30
Near Misses-600
Unsafe Acts/ Unsafe Conditions- 1,000s
Having open and effective incident prevention strategies in place is essential to a positive health and safety culture. Good communication of these strategies is also essential at every level. It is no good allocating significant resources and then not informing staff what you have done or are planning to do. As far as they are concerned you may have done nothing!
The above triangle demonstrates the relationship between Unsafe acts, Unsafe conditions and Incidents: Near Miss, Injury, Severe Injury and Fatality.
The theory is simple though, regardless of what ratios you consider, reduce the number of unsafe acts/ conditions and you are less likely to have incidents! If unsafe acts and unsafe conditions are addressed, this is a Proactive health and safety measure.
Half the number of unsafe acts/ conditions and you half the risk of a serious incident from occurring!
Near Misses: have gone one stage further and resulted in an incident, in which no harm was done. Investigating near misses is an important measure to help prevent higher consequence incidents from occurring but is still a Reactive measure, when additional safeguard are implemented to help prevent a recurrence. By not reporting a near miss can, this lead to a further incident occurring, if additional safeguards are not implemented.
Injury Incidents: Investigating of actual injury incidents is where many smaller companies start to prevent recurrences. The flaw with only investigating injury incidents is there are other opportunities which could have potentially enabled you to prevent these, which you are ignoring. Putting additional measures in place to prevent a repeat incident is also a Reactive approach to safety.
REMEMBER:
"The most effective health and safety management systems combine both a Proactive and Reactive approach to incident prevention!"
Proactive Health and Safety Monitoring:
Proactive Health and Safety monitoring is simple really, carry out regular health and safety inspections, health and safety audits and behavioural safety audits.
What is the aim of these: to find unsafe acts and unsafe conditions, before they lead to an incident!
Examples of unsafe acts:
- Using a damaged piece of equipment such as a ladder or forklift truck.
- Climbing up on warehouse racking.
- Jumping out of a lorry, instead of using the steps.
- Climbing onto a roof without appropriate fall protection.
- Maintaining equipment for which you are not qualified or authorised.
- Using faulty lifting equipment.
- Horse play or practical jokes.
- Not using fall restraint harness/ lanyard when using a cherry picker.
- Driving a fork lift truck when you know you are not qualified.
- Using dangerous equipment under the influence of drug or alcohol.
- Not using safe walkways.
- Not wearing personal protective equipment which has been stipulated.
- Not locking off equipment before maintaining it.
- Using a mobile phone while driving or operating equipment.
Examples of unsafe conditions:
- Providing faulty ladders.
- Providing electrical equipment, which is never Portable appliance tested.
- A Faulty Fork lift truck.
- Faulty lifting equipment.
- Faulty/damaged warehouse racking.
- Inappropriate vehicle/ pedestrian segregation.
- Missing or inappropriate fire preventive measures.
- Missing handrails.
- A locked fire exit door.
- A spillage of oil on the floor.
- Flammable or combustible materials being stored next to a building heater or boiler.
- A fire alarm which is not working.
Own Your Health and Safety Management System:
The Health and Safety Management system comprises all of the: H&S procedures, policies, risk assessments, safe systems of work, information, instruction, training and supervision.
The "system" should be a living, evolving thing which continually improving and is owned by everyone in the organisation from top to the very bottom.
If the attitude is that it is the health and safety departments problem and that health and safety is separate to the rest of the organisation, then this type of organisation will never achieve a positive health and safety culture.
If a procedure does not fully match the way a task is carried out in practice, it should be investigated whether the procedure is incorrect or the task (or both.) They should be modified so both the task and procedure follows "Health and Safety Best Practice."
Any director, manager or supervisor, who see someone breaking company H&S procedures must never walk by without challenging that behaviour. By challenging though as we have said earlier this should not lead to automatic punishment, punishment must always be the last resort.
Health and Safety must be an inherent part of everyone's job. The health and safety department are the experts and focal point for health and safety but the temptation in any business is for them to be separate entity from the rest of the organisation.
Continual Improvement:
Use information gained from Proactive and Reactive health and safety monitoring systems to continually improve your health and safety policies and procedures.
No Health and Safety Management System should ever be classed as perfect or finalised!
Health and Safety Committee:
The health and safety committee should be made up of members from every level in the company, including the lowliest shop floor worker and up to and including the managing director or CEO.
The only organisations that should not have a health and safety committee are very small companies in which H&S communications are easily made to all workers.
Full attendance of the meeting should always be encouraged, remember that production does not always come first and the reasons for the meeting are to help prevent accidents and communicate to all levels of the workforce your commitment to health and safety.
Health and Safety Committee meetings may be a part of another "management" meeting held at the beginning of such meetings where H&S is the first agenda item. Once the health and safety part is over some of the committee members who need not be there for the other "business parts" of the meeting, may leave but there should always a part of the health and safety committee meeting where everyone is allowed to openly comment or raise health and safety issues e.g. an "Any Other Business" section of the committee meeting.
Consultation with the workforce:
Consult with the workforce at all levels when developing and improving health and safety procedures/ policies.
The people carrying out the tasks are the experts in their job: risk assessments, safe systems of work, H&S training and other health and safety procedures are always best when they are written with worker involvement.
Remember though consultation involves two way dialogue!
Involving All Stakeholders:
Everyone involved in the organisation should be included in development of a health and safety management system, including contractors, visitors, enforcement officer, insurance companies, customers and any other person who can be affected by your activities.
Contractor and Visitor inductions are essential and should communicate a summarised version of your H&S Management system, including what to do in an Emergency.
Written By: Stephen Wallett CMIOSH OSHCR