Concordia News - Health and Safety Culture - July 2009

Published by Bill Rainey


ACC Review - What do we think about it?
The up-coming ACC review and prospect of bringing back "experience rating" has received business support.  But unions are concerned about employers hiding their accidents.  Also that workers will be pressured to say injuries happened at home (rather than work), or that they must return to work earlier to keep claims down. 

We say that the review needs to carefully explore all options that will encourage organisations to continuously improve workplace safety.  Rather than relying on a "tick box" compliance process, businesses need to adopt new strategies that will create for them a strong culture of safety.  ACC can take a lead, by adopting an approach that reinforces for organisations that "zero workplace injury" is an attainable goal.

Our record in NZ for protecting the health and safety of workers is very poor.  Leadership attitudes and business practices need to change for the better.  Our H&S strategies can be much more proactive, using lead, as well as lag, indicators.  Safety culture development can occur in partnership with unions to get "buy-in", and include regular, independent, evaluation and review to ensure transparency.

These are some additional areas for ACC review to tackle, as well as looking at past performance indicators.

 

Serious Workplace Accidents
Almost daily, we are reminded of the dangers faced by employees going about their daily jobs.  Last week, the NZ Herald reported Mr Nel died after a boiler explosion at Hibiscus Coast School near Auckland.  Another person was injured.  This incident highlights the need for safety at schools where often there are old boiler systems, incinerators and other systems which present high risks.

 

Smutty emails "OK"
And in the same edition of the NZ Herald, the story of Philip Walker who was reinstated to his job at Safe Air by the Employment Relations Authority.  He had been sacked for sending "emails of concern" containing explicit depictions of lewdness, nudity and/or sex acts.  The ERA considered there was a culture at Safe Air which condoned this type of behaviour, and that Mr Walker did not fully understand the company's email policies.  Safe Air is appealing the ERA decision.

This situation happens so often, where organisational policies say one thing, but what actually happens in the workplace is different.  It is so important for senior managers to know accurately what is actually happening in their organisations...this is done by assessments that dig deeper into workplace culture.   

 

Best Practice
In our last newsletter, we talked about the calendar produced by Tarniya Comrie and her H&S team at Department of Corrections.  Here's another initiative from them - a handy health and safety "aide memoir" for managers which provides easy reference to all those difficult topics which are easy to forget...more....

 

Leadership
With all the talk about health and safety culture, we can't over-emphasise the importance of leadership.  Studies show that 80% of an organisation's culture is attributable to the role modelling of its leaders (Prof Malcolm Higgs, Professor Human Resources and Organisational Behaviour, University of Southampton).

The secret of great safety leadership is that it is no different from great leadership generally; it simply requires great leaders who are motivated to improve safety.  The behaviours they show in abundance are: vision, credibility, collaboration, communication, action orientation, feedback and recognition and accountability (research from BST Solutions).  To this list we would like to add "patience".  Culture change takes time, and leaders wanting to achieve their visionary goals need to pace themselves. 

Remember the words of Dr Martin Luther King Jnr:

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