Health and Safety Risk Management

Key management concepts in OHS

Riskex — Wed, 16 May 2012 10:06:27 +0000

More classic stuff from George – please don’t read this if overly sensitive or think you are perfect already. Read more of Georges stuff here: SAFETY REFLECTIONS

Key management concepts (These concepts have come mainly from working with wise leaders on major change projects and critical reflection on personal experience)

Management focus is the key to quality safety performance. Like all other management functions highly effective leadership is essential in OHS.

A compelling vision creates a culture of greatness.

Challenging the status quo is very satisfying but needs to be approached with sensitivity in some environments.

The motto of the Australian Special Air Services Regiment (S.A.S.R.) is “Who Dares Wins”

The greatest motivator is not money. It is the opportunity to learn, grow in responsibilities, to contribute and be recognised.

Learn the context, culture and past before trying to make changes. Unless a crisis situation is apparent realise effective change requires a lot of effort and time.

Kotter speaks of 8 steps for successful large scale change- Increase urgency, Build the guiding team, Get the vision right, Communicate for buy-in, Empower action, Create short-term wins, Do not let up, Make change stick.

Trying is just a noisy way of not doing something.

Use the advantages of a quality approach, particularly the continuous improvement philosophy.

It is just as important to manage up and sideways as down.

Be tough on the task but gentle on yourself & others.

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

Reward loyalty or you will lose good people.

People do not need to be managed, they need to have their potential unleashed.

Admit your mistakes.

Strategy is important but make sure you spend sufficient time in the field that you do not lose sight of the reality of how the organisation is being managed. Manage by walking around.

Theory is important but constantly ask yourself if this will work in the real world.

It is often the relationships you build not your technical skills that determines success, network for success.

Catch people doing good and make a fuss of them, routinely thank people for their efforts.

Build your support coalition including informal leaders and influencers and the old timers.

Learn what others expect of me, particularly what my boss wants, help my boss succeed.

Meet with the safety team individually and collectively, develop an enjoyable focussed team building activity in association with your team, adventure based activities should receive consideration. Encourage team members to discuss issues, including work and personal problems with you. Adopt the roles of mentor / coach / advisor as well as team leader.

Learn the skills of reflective listening and appropriate self-disclosure, will help with interpersonal relationships.

Use face to face communication whenever possible. Produce and expect succinct documentation When reading your correspondence the reader must say “Wow” in the first third of the page. When listening to your presentation the listener must say “Wow” within the first 3 minutes. COMMUNICATE, COMMUNICATE, COMMUNICATE in a way that inspires.

A major sin in business is long, overly complicated policy, procedure and other written documentation. Busy people do not have time to write it and busy people do not have time to read it. Keep it simple and ask yourself if it is too much like hard work to read. Use 1 page max. for routine correspondence.

Have huge but realistic goals.

Do the simplest thing that will work.

Remember the 6 P rule-Prior Preparation and Planning Prevents Poor Performance.

Be a life-long learner and encourage those in your team to be the same, I see an important part of my role is to help those in the safety team to develop their skills.

Ask for and give regular feedback.

Communicate your expectations.

Good amounts of quality time for you, family and friends is essential for high performance at work.

Concentrate on the things that give the biggest bang for your buck.

Get out of your comfort zone. When you are out of your comfort zone you are already growing by default.

Persist until it pays off. Never give up.

Excellence is deliberate, not something we stumble onto.

Be conscious of “catastrophising”. Some people put undue weight on the bad aspects of their life and let that overcome the good aspects of their life. This makes it difficult to develop strategies to move forward.

Use learning needs analyse to guide development of targeted learning. Use Action and Experiential learning models and avoid lecture style presentations unless very short.

Develop objectives and goals for what you do, if you do not know where you want to go you cannot go there.

Concentrate on the MUST DO’s.

When initiating change remember “People support what they create” Initiating change is difficult at the best of times, if you do not involve those affected by the change in the change process it is unlikely to work.

It does not hurt to relax and do something silly occasionally, include your team.

Celebrate success.

Identify and separate customer needs from want, the customer is king.

Get some runs on the board quickly, particularly what your boss wants.

Whatever you do must be based on a needs analysis.

Project teams with defined deliverables, timelines and milestones can be a great way to drive change.

Carefully define the scope of any project you take on

As a leader it is more important to be respected than liked.

Hard work brings luck.

You do not know what you can get away with until you try.

Produce a service that is useful to others.

Focus on the solution not the problem.

More focus= Less stress.

Keep you promises to others and yourself.

Do it-Do not procrastinate.

Do not be scared to go against the tide.

Do not give into anger-Out of control anger is not toughness.

Do not associate with negative people.

Stretch your people.

Demand high standards.

Get a mentor.

Continually challenge yourself.

What does not kill you makes you stronger..

Expect criticism.

When you are on top you are a natural target.

Hang out with positive people.

Do not give excuses.

Set the bar even higher.

Win-Win is bull-dust, you have to win, other has to lose.

If you cannot solve a problem it is because you are playing by the rules.

It is kind of fun to do the impossible.

The only place you find success before work is in the dictionary…

Aim for simplicity not complexity.

Sell the benefits not the product.

.Do not be shy in self-promotion.

Know your unique market proposition (what benefits you provided that are different from your competition)

Leadership is the often forgotten key to excellence in everything we do, the number one job of a leader is to transmit and embed high value standards.

Remember when thinking about leadership-Ducks quack, Eagles soar.

Technorati Tags: management concepts, ohs, safety leadership

A Different Way of Learning

Riskex — Wed, 16 May 2012 09:52:15 +0000

A Different Way of Learning, Adventure Based Learning, George Robotham

Is your learning becoming routine and boring? You may like to try adventure based learning. Having been associated for many years with a program that uses adventure based learning in life-style, leadership and team building issues I can see application for this style of learning in many fields.

Adventure based learning works in many ways-

Adventure Based Learning Process

The Individual

↓

Experience a State of

Disequilibrium

↓

By Being Placed In A

Novel Setting

↓

And

A Cooperative Environment

↓

While Being Presented With

Unique Problem Solving Situations

↓

That Lead To

Feelings of Accomplishment

↓

Which Are Augmented By

Processing the Experience

↓

Which Promotes

Generalisation and Transfer

↓

To Future Endeavours

THE FIVE PRINCIPLES

PARTICIPATION

Participation asks that the person be present at each activity and participate at whatever level he/she is comfortable. Participation encourages people to be with the group to work together to achieve both individual and group goals.

RESPECT

Respect involves respect for others, respect for yourself and respect for the environment. We ask for a commitment to work towards changing behavior that is not in some way putting down yourself or others.

SAFETY

Safety – Participants need to know that they will be safe. Safety needs to be both emotional and physical. Putting safety up as a principle at the start of the program says that we care about what happens to you and we ask for a commitment to take responsibility for your own safety and to that of other members of the group. There also needs to be a perception of safety by the group so we invite challenges to the leader for more information if there are any concerns.

LEGAL

Legal – A commitment to work within the framework of the law.

Source-A course in program development & facilitation, The Outlook, Boonah , Qld. Dept. of Families, Youth & Community Care

Adventure based learning can take many forms – Problem solving in the bush, map reading with a treasure hunt, canoeing is a low stress approach, camping overnight, work environment simulations, puzzles, storey telling, observation of the environment various team activities etc. The learning, problem solving and relationship building that is experienced around the campfire at night should not be underestimated. Adventure based learning has been given a bad name by a small number of gung ho, charge through the bush trainers. Proper adventure based learning will have a very high emphasis on participant safety. It does not need to have high levels of physical challenge. Some programs have the focus on the outdoor experience when the focus should be on the learning.

Adventure based learning is different, most people enjoy it, does not have to be physically challenging, can be a great relationship builder and, with thought, can be applied to a wide variety of learning. One word of caution is that if you are camping overnight you need to let people they will have to rough it. For the people who are phased by the lack of their own bed, basic meals and the possibility of no showers or toilets you are better off not taking them.

Technorati Tags: adventure based learning, leadership, safety training

Is Victoria cracking the codes to WHS

Riskex — Wed, 16 May 2012 09:00:21 +0000

Is Victoria cracking the codes to WHS? Recent post by Riskology

I’ve been watching with interest Victoria sinking their claws into the new laws saying they don’t want to commit to the harmonised laws anymore because of the cost, which will impact mainly small business.

The Victorian Treasurer, Kim Wells said during a budget speech 1st May 2012 that the ‘Government will not sign up to the current proposal for harmonised legislation for occupational health and safety. It offers little benefit for Victoria to offset the $3.4billion of estimated costs, the majority of which falls on small business. Victoria will continue to work towards best practice legislation’.

This doesn’t sit square shouldered with me. Firstly they have not released the Price Waterhouse Coopers report which outlines these costs, they have only released a summary, they will also miss out on $50million which the federal government would have given in funding and it also throws a big stake in the heart of the harmonisation goals.

Victoria as a state prides itself in saying they have the best safety laws in the country, but if the rest of the country are harmonising and Victoria is not, doesn’t this mean they are swimming against the progress of safety, I’ve always thought the KISS principle with safety worked, and harmonised laws were loosely aiming towards the KISS principle.

One of the bigger changes with the harmonised laws is the definition ‘officer’ which brings in the financial decision makers. So when a decision needs to be made about safety it doesn’t always get road blocked by the big man that signs the cheque. Isn’t the goal for harmonisation end of the day to save lives and reduce injuries, rather than closing the book when it passes under the bean counters nose? See the whole post here

Technorati Tags: laws, Safety, WHS harmonisation

Lessons for NDIS in national claims model

Riskex — Wed, 16 May 2012 06:35:00 +0000

Lessons for NDIS in national claims model

Media Release 16th May 2012

Suncorp’s national approach to managing personal injury claims provides valuable lessons for the proposed National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) and National Injury Insurance Scheme (NIIS).

Speaking at the recent Traumatic Injury and Disability Insurance Summit, Suncorp’s Executive General Manager Statutory Claims, Paul Smeaton, outlined the advantages of operating as a national personal injury claims manager.

“Since Suncorp Commercial Insurance brought together our workers compensation and CTP operations into one Statutory division last year, we’ve realised a number of benefits,” said Mr Smeaton.

“Suncorp is able to utilise the complexity and nuances of the various state-based personal injury schemes to drive national best-practice in claims management.

“Each scheme measures performance and quality of outcomes slightly differently, so we have taken the highest benchmarks from each to create a national quality assurance program that lifts the performance for all schemes.

“We also facilitate the sharing of ideas and new techniques between schemes, leveraging off what drives success in one scheme to improve others – particularly around injury management and case management.

Managing personal injury claims is complex, requiring a great deal of direct contact and interaction with a number of stakeholders. Suncorp has implemented improvements that allow claims advisors to do their job more effectively.

“The introduction of centralised administration has freed up claims advisors to focus on early intervention and tailored case management in order to get the best outcome for the injured person,” said Mr Smeaton.

“At an operational level, having a single claims management platform and a single data warehouse maximises the scale advantages Suncorp is able to achieve as Australia’s largest personal injury insurer.

“The NDIS and NIIS will face a number of challenges as they are implemented, so it’s important that the experience of insurers like Suncorp is utilised for the benefit of the scheme and the people it’s designed to help.”

Background:

The summit on 11 May 2012 in Sydney was the second in the series of Traumatic Injury & Disability Summits hosted by Suncorp in conjunction with PwC. The first summit on 17 February in Melbourne focused on the business case for an NDIS and NIIS.

More information is available at: www.traumaticinjurydisabilitysummit.com.au

ENDS

For further information contact:

Rob White

External Communications Manager

Commercial Insurance

Suncorp

Ph. 02 8121 0467

Mob. 0411 881 887

Jake Krausmann

Senior Communications Advisor

Commercial Insurance

Suncorp

Ph. 02 8121 0469

Mob. 0411 409 074

jake.krausmann@suncorp.com.au

Technorati Tags: case management, claims, injury management, NDIS, personal injury

Objectivity, Audits and Attribution When Calculating Risk

Riskex — Mon, 14 May 2012 12:21:03 +0000

So you reckon you can calculate risk to 3 decimal places?? Think again. Latest article by Dr Robert Long, that may make you rethink your belief in Risk Assessment as being objective!. If you liked this article then you should read the whole series: CLICK HERE. I highly recommend you check out Rob’s new book “RISK MAKES SENSE”

Extract:

Finally, we should be self-reflective about our assessments and be prepared to admit our bias, as we invite the view of others into our decision making. Once you know that your auditing is biased you are then enlivened to the fact that you could be sometimes be wrong and that even the participation of those being audited in the process might be a valuable strategy.

You may also like to check out our Free Risk Score Calculator HERE

Objectivity, Audits and Attribution

I made the mistake recently of suggesting to a group of risk managers that a discussion about the myth of objectivity was overdue. I was blown out of the water with the response that such a discussion was irrelevant! They all knew what they were doing, were experienced and had extensive audit tools to ensure objectivity was their reply.

(Just a quick warning, the next paragraph is a bit academic but stick with it so you can get to the Risk Ranking Activity at the end.)

Unfortunately, objectivity is a myth. The myth was dismantled by Michael Polyani in 1946 in his publication Science, Faith and Society and by Thomas Kuhn in 1962 by the radical book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. It was shown by Polyani, Kuhn and now a host of postmodernist thinkers (Heidegger, Foucalt, Derrida and Baudrillard) that the positivist accounts of history and science could not be separated from the humans who participate in such accounts. It was the work of the Frankfurt School that showed that all communication is infused with politics, power and disposition. Indeed, the postmodernists argue that a lack of participation in the process of analysis robs any communication of commitment and intimacy with the subject. The reality is, all data is interpreted and our interpretations rely on a host of cognitive, social and sub-conscious biases.

Any assessment of risk is an emotional, arational and subjective exercise. Risks are not objective but are ‘attributed’. One person is anxious about one activity when the person beside them is not. Some people are confident with some high level risks and others are much more cautious. In Risk Makes Sense a table (p. 33, 34) was presented and discussion (Is Risk Neutral) showing how various human biases aggravate or mitigate risk attribution. The idea that humans assess risk objectively or just calculate risk based on the common criteria in any risk matrix (exposure, frequency, probability and consequence) is not supported by the evidence.

One fun exercise I like to do in any worksite induction is to draw a line on a white board and to get everyone present to introduce themselves by placing their name beside the highest risk activity they would be prepared to undertake. See Figure 1. This is not only a fun way of getting to know people in the induction group but shows instantly how everyone in the room attributes risk differently. Then each person in the group explains where their risk threshold is and gets a chance to explain their understanding of risk. In this way in less than 20 minutes everyone has shown everyone in the group how Risk Makes Sense for them. This not only blows away the nonsense of ‘common sense’ but raises the bar for the importance of safety conversations with others. (You are more than welcome to take this idea and use it in your next induction, tell me how it went.)

We know from socialpsychology that the way we attribute risk to various activities is in part affected by many cognitive biases. The ‘availability heuristic’ and ‘probability neglect’ are two mechanisms that powerfully affect the way we attribute risk. Depending what is ‘available’ to our memory or our senses we magnify, distort or dismiss the value of certain risks. We neglect the probability of something happening depending how distant our emotions are from the subject. This is also called the ‘recency effect’, people tend to overestimate risk if their experience of an event is more recent and personal.

Humans are emotional creatures and when fear and anxiety are intensified people focus on the adverse outcomes more than the likelihood of that outcome occurring. This intensifying of emotions is where much human risk aversion originates. If you put this emotionally charged perception in crowds or through the media then mass hysteria and groupthink further distort the real assessment of risk. You then find the general population becomes fearful of prowlers, immigrants, Islam or community violence even though its incidence id decreasing. The problem is that availability and attribution factors make people fearful when they need not be fearful and fearless when perhaps more caution is required.

Figure 1. Snapshot of my Induction Risk Ranking Activity

So where does the myth of objectivity leave us with auditing and assessment? They key is social awareness, communities-of-practice and self-awareness. Lone audits and assessments are OK, but don’t think you are somehow superhuman and objective. There should not only be ownership in risk by workers, there should also be ownership in risk by auditors. The more we try to ‘step away’ from something to try and be objective about it, the more we reduce our participation in ownership ‘with’ the subject.

All checklists are developed within the biases of the developers of the checklist. Sometimes its good to think beyond the checklist, the checklist is often the minimum in thinking, checklists can be very constraining to open and critical thinking. The last couple of incident investigations I was on indicated that the incident was caused as a result of people not perceiving factors that were not on the checklist. Of course the solution by the crusaders for bureaucracy is to simply increase the size of checklists. Increasing checklists doesn’t of itself increase the capability of people the think critically. Indeed, the ‘flooding’ of people with checklists sometimes induces the opposite, learned helplessness.

It also might be good to bring outsiders and novices on audits and assessment walks, just because they don’t think like you. There is nothing more dangerous to an audit or assessment than the problem of ‘confirmation bias’. We all like to have the agreement of others and the back slapping that enshews but this also limits our capability to think ‘outside the box’. Maybe the apparently ‘dumb’ questions of others unfamiliar with your auditing bias are just what you need, particularly if you have been doing the same auditing processes for some time.

Technorati Tags: audits, calculating risk, checklists, risk attribution, risk managers

School Fair Safety

Riskex — Sun, 13 May 2012 06:18:27 +0000

School Fete Safety

Image source

I got an email from a reader overnight and it really concerned me. Schools have a huge responsibility in regards to student safety and from what I have seen, generally take this responsibility very seriously and professionally. However, some of the stuff I have seen come come from my kids school lately seems to be a bit over the top. I could go on forever about how sad it is that peanut butter sandwiches and monkey bars are banned etc and understand that kids are much more precious these days and need to be protected from themselves and not have the same learning experiences and adventures that we did as kids. BUT, we have written about safety overkill many times in the past and I think this may be a concerning outcome of that. Are we so focussed on micro managing safety and risk that we totally lose sight of or forget about the things that are really going to cause us big time grief, particularly when they aren’t part of normal day to day operations???? It is incredulous that the planning for an event such as this didn’t include traffic management plans, strict rules for stall holders/operators and constant supervision/intervention by trained Safety Officers??????? Here is the letter, what is your advice to the reader?

“Safety concerns – I wonder when we see things unsafe in the community what we can do?. I mean often the best and only thing we can do is witness it. The thing is, sometimes it is a thought like: "oh that is a problem waiting to happen". I was at my daughter’s school fete today and some of the working participants were leaving and drove their vehicle through the busiest area of the fete with little care. Of course the vehicles were going slow, which is the least they can do, however, no other precautionary measures were taken. It was dark and people everywhere and then vehicles were trying to leave. This kind of operation is never safe…a vehicle driving and clearing the crowds as the car approaches people. If safe measures were being taken the vehicle would have left before dark, have had escorts and cleared a safe and visibly marked path. And preferably this path is in the least busy part of the venue. I was shocked that this was able to happen. This is at a fete that is held every year and is professionally run. A lot of money is made at these events, but if safety isn’t the first priority then it isn’t worth it.”

Technorati Tags: fair, fete, school safety, traffic management plan

Thanks to Protector Alsafe

Riskex — Sat, 12 May 2012 21:06:13 +0000

Thanks To Protector Alsafe

I am teaching BSBOHS403B: Identify Hazards and Assess OHS Risks (cert IV) and a couple of other cert IV & Dip courses at Kangan TAFE and Protector Alsafe have provided a safety show bag for each of my students as a start to build their resource folder which forms part of the assessment tasks.

The showbags contained safety glasses, ear plugs and a range of safety equipment brochures and Protector Alsafe’s catalogue which contains a wealth of relevant safety information and is a important resource for the students to move towards becoming OHS Practitioners.

It should be noted that Protector Alsafe supplies safety equipment, training and services to make workplaces safer so workers return home safely every day.

The showbags were also topped up with a couple of WorkSafe publications and a range of other important safety related items.

Les Cameron – Sessional Teacher – Kangan TAFE – Moonee Ponds campus

Technorati Tags: ear plugs, safety glasses, safety information

Safety Poem

Riskex — Fri, 11 May 2012 20:01:05 +0000

Safety Poem

Written by a Safety Person leaving a Safety Team to pursue other opportunities and based on the Lewis Carroll ‘Walrus’ poem:

‘The time has come’, the walrus said, ‘to talk of many things,
of boots and gloves and fluoro vests, for the team of safety kings’.
‘But wait a bit’ the team all cried ‘before we have our chat,
for some of us are out of breath and we need our warden hats’.
It’s time to start my journey as I wave goodbye to you,
So enjoy yourself completely in every single thing you do.
On this safety journey we stand united as a team,
with steel capped boots and ear plugs, and fluoro vests that gleam.
Our job, is to save lives…..every single day,
we all take pride in our work, not to look away.
We see a lot of risks, that others try to take,
The shortcuts they are taking, put their health and lives at stake.
The question I’d like to ask them, or the thing I’d love to say,
if OHS wasn’t here, would you live another day?
In safety we’re on a journey, and getting it to a tee,
and one day you’ll be proud to say, that safety is sexy!

Technorati Tags: safety person, safety poetry, safety team

Exploding GPS–Safety Alert?

Riskex — Fri, 11 May 2012 19:44:34 +0000

Exploding GPS–Safety Alert?

A recent article on Insurance Alert shows graphic photos of the aftermath of an alleged GPS battery explosion. The subsequent fire then caused significant damage to the vehicle as you will see in the photos. I’ve never heard of this before but did find one other similar incident, details here. We all know how hot it can get on a car dashboard and a journalist with nothing better to do recently baked a tray of cookies on a car dashboard!! Temperature was measured at a steady 175F (80C) so I guess add this to the temperature generated by a battery being charged………? I’ve also found a few references to the batteries in mobile phones exploding and causing fires and, in a few cases, death? Seems that lithium ion battery explosions are real but very rare and happen as quality control slips and manufactures try to squeeze extra life out of smaller sizes and increasingly power thirsty devices. See this other article Summer of the Exploding Laptop. Anyway, here are the photos, source unknown?

Technorati Tags: dashboard, exploding battery, gps fire, mobile phone

The Things You Need To Know About Health and Safety Leadership

Riskex — Wed, 09 May 2012 05:53:41 +0000

Latest brilliant reflection from GEORGE ROBOTHAM from www.ohschange.com.au. See his other articles HERE

This is probably one of the most significant pieces of work that I have published for sometime. I have been involved with its evolution for quite a while now and it has been peer reviewed of over 50 professionals and modified accordingly.

I must stress the point that this is NOT another boring white paper or exercise in navel gazing by some boffin who has never worked for a living! It is deliberately not written in an academically rigorous style so as not to be perceived as yet another irrelevant academic paper. Being a humble genius, George makes the point that he doesn’t think he has all the answers and his aim with the paper is to simply promote discussion so we can all learn. George uses real examples from his “coal face” experience and quotes from notable world leaders to make his excellent points. ENJOY!!!!!!!

The Things You Need To Know About Health and Safety Leadership

by George Robotham

People do not care how much you know, they want to know how much you care – Alexander G.

Quotable Quote

"A health and 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"

Introduction

Leadership can make or break an organisation. It is my contention that general leadership principles and specific safety leadership principles are not applied frequently or well in Australian industry. This paper is written with the intention of introducing supervisors, managers, OHS personnel, H.R.M. personnel and Learning personnel to general and safety leadership, encouraging them to learn more about the topics and to apply the principles in the workplace.

The paper explains the importance of general leadership and safety leadership and comments on the current state of the both types of leadership in Australian industry. Examples of my personal experience with general and safety leadership are given. The importance of management commitment in leadership is emphasised and some of the characteristics of successful leaders are discussed. The results of a major safety benchmarking study are summarised and there is specific discussion on successful safety leadership. Much of the paper references the work of acknowledged experts in general and safety leadership.

There are some suggestions on what the OHS professional can do to improve safety leadership in their organisation. Comment is given on the availability of leadership learning in Australia, I summarise what I think are the ten top things in safety leadership. The two questions at the end of the paper are very important for all safety professionals to answer.

Purpose of this paper

The purpose of this paper is to identify those factors that contribute to effective safety leadership and to assist in the development of safety leadership management plans.

Why is safety leadership important

Safety leadership defines the purpose, goals, vision, mission and objectives of the safety management system. It further sets the direction for safety, lays down the expectations and guides implementation. It is a vital component of strategic and operational management plans. Leaders must manage by walking around and often be seen in the workplace.

Why read this paper? What will I learn? What is in it for me?

This paper will serve as a basic introduction to safety leadership, hopefully encourage you to learn more about the topic and serve as a motivator and basic knowledge for development of safety leadership plans. This will assist in the reduction of Class 1 personal damage in your organisation (Class 1 personal damage is that which permanently alters the future of the individual-Fatal and non-fatal) Excellent safety leadership is the key to excellent safety management systems. The sections What The OHS Professional Can Do To Improve Safety Leadership and The top 10 things that are essential for safety leadership may be of particular interest.

Leadership Perspectives

Having survived a number of years in industry I am acutely aware that leadership of an organisation can make or break the organisation. The importance of leadership is vastly underrated in Australian industry, Leadership is the often forgotten key to excellence in all aspects of business and life. Unfortunately it is sometimes the refuge of scoundrels.

Excellent health and safety leadership is the most important thing in maintaining an excellent health and safety management system. Having researched general and health and safety leadership extensively I am of the view we should be doing more to integrate general leadership principles into health and safety.

Health and safety leadership is a line management function and an integral part of management accountability. It requires a solid understanding of core skills, competencies, planning and execution. Senior leaders must personally drive the health and safety culture. All leaders must clearly communicate expectations, model and reinforce required health and safety behaviours and demonstrate a strong link between their health and safety leadership and career opportunities. Training, on the job learning, coaching, mentoring and projects or secondments to share health and safety knowledge are means of developing the required leadership (Adapted from Rio Tinto)

In my experience many supervisors and managers know little about general leadership and even less about safety leadership. It is rare to find an OHS professional who has a good understanding of general leadership and many do not have a good grasp of safety leadership. I would go as far as to say leadership is not understood by many in management. People are often promoted to supervisor / manager positions because of their technical skills and with little knowledge of and preparation for leadership. How much OHS education is evident in tertiary education of potential managerial personnel?

Leaders influence, inspire and drive people to a common goal, create vision and excitement; set a direction, motivate and inspire people to follow; align people; and build new relationships and structure. Leadership is about people.

Managers keep the day-to-day operations of an organisation running smoothly and must plan and budget; coordinate, control and execute activities; organise staff and work within an existing structure. Management is about systems and things.

General Colin Powell is reported as having said leadership is the art of accomplishing more than the science of management says is possible.

Honest and ethical behavior is the centre piece of leadership, we constantly hear about otherwise highly competent leaders who fail because of ethical issues. When highly ethical leaders do not take up the leadership challenge less ethical people will fill the void. This appears to happen commonly in politics, business and the sporting world.

Personal experience of leadership

Early in my OHS career I made an error of judgement while working for a safety consultancy organisation. The General Manager attempted to discipline me in a team meeting. My manager, Tim, intervened and took full responsibility for my mistake. I later thanked Tim who explained he did what he did to send messages to 3 groups of people.

The General Manager: “No-one interferes with my people, discipline of my people is my responsibility and it will only be used when all other avenues have been explored and it will always be positive and done in private.”

You: “You were feeling down and I wanted to let you know you were still a valued member of my team”

Other team members: “I am in charge of this outfit and no-one else interferes with my team. Making mistakes that we learn from is perfectly acceptable”

I would have followed Tim anywhere after this.

It has taken me thirty years and reading extensively about leadership to realise the significance of what Tim did that day.

“Leaders send out messages, often subtly, about what they value and expect.”

For about a year I worked with a General Manager Operations, John, who could best be described as a humble but focused leader who had an overriding commitment to safety. John would turn up at operating sites in the middle of the night to see how safety was being managed. He would jump on a haul truck and go with the operator while the truck was loaded, John would question the operators about safety and tell them that he expected safety to be their top priority. He would walk through the workshop and observe how work was being performed. He would then gather everybody together and give them feedback about safety and tell them what he expected.

He used to give the workers his mobile number and tell them to call him anytime if a safety issue was not solved to their satisfaction. This did not happen often but there was some big action when it did. The approach by John was not always appreciated by the business unit supervisors and managers as he often knew more about how safety was managed at their site than they did, they were kept on their toes.

John had a very simple approach to safety audits, he chose ten things his wide experience told him had been known to cause fatalities and the associated prevention methods. He audited to see if the required preventative actions were in place. At the audit closing meeting he reported on the status of the items and said he expected the required actions to be in place by the time he came back in six months. All this was said in a soft, slow, Southern drawl but the managers and supervisors knew their jobs were on the line.

John let his subordinates know he expected nothing less than 100% commitment to safety, those who did not comply were not around long. Word quickly got around about his safety expectations, single handed he raised the profile of safety in the organisation. Unfortunately after John left there was no one to carry on his work at the same level.

Then there was my manager, Greg. I organised an outside training organisation to conduct training for health and safety representatives. Early in the course the instructor asked me to come over and talk to the participants who raised a number of quite reasonable safety issues with me. Some were within my power to fix so we discussed how to fix them. Some required management action so I asked Greg to attend. Well what a circus! We lost count of the number of times he told us how committed to safety he was, we also lost count of the even greater number of times he refused to commit to positive action to address the issues. In the end the group lost patience with Greg and told him to leave and stop wasting their time. The course instructor, a highly qualified OHS professional, was dumbfounded by the performance Greg put on and asked me where I had got him from. It was not long after this that I resigned, I figured I was wasting my time with a manager like Greg.

Lastly there is my mate Roy who leads the “Connect” program for at risk youth, “Connect” uses adventure-based training to teach team building, leadership and life style skills to young people facing various difficulties in their lives. Working from a simple but well researched and validated model “Connect” influences the lives of everyone it touches, for many it transforms their lives.

Roy is an extremely humble and effective, grass-roots leader with very high moral principles who puts his heart and soul into his work. Through his uncomplicated leadership style Roy has moulded a highly motivated team that consistently operates at a high level. If I was to analyse Roy’s leadership style I would say he simply does the leadership basics exceptionally well. There is little complexity in the way Roy goes about leadership, this is a major strength.

Framework of What Follows

The majority of what follows is the wise words of acknowledged experts in health and safety leadership gained after extensive research into this topic.

Management Commitment

Livermore (in Carter, Ulrich and Goldsmith, page 46) observes “The best system or model in the world is not going to do your organisation a bit of good unless you have a top down commitment to making it work. Your board of directors, C.E.O., and senior management have to be firmly committed to being the best of the best .They set the tone and direction of the entire organisation. This creates a trickle-down effect throughout the organisation. Once mid-level management and low level employees, see top executives leading the way, most of them will begin to support the initiative as well.”

Kouzes on leadership (The Art and Practice of Leadership Coaching)

The most important quality people look for and admire in a leader is personal credibility. Credibility is the foundation of leadership. If we do not believe in the messenger we will not believe the message. And what is credibility behaviourally?. The most frequent response is “Do what you say you will do.”, or “DWYSYWD” for short.

Leaders must be clear about their beliefs. They must know what they stand for. Then they must put what they say into practice, they must act on their beliefs.

Quotable Quote

“The people are fashioned according to the example of their king and edicts are less powerful than the life (example) of the king” Claudian, c. 365,Egyptian epic poet

Leaders must build trust

Introducing OHS change inevitably upsets the established order in organizations and forces people to question their existing role in the organization. Often people will be asked to do something that is different from the norm and to do that which they do not agree with. Persons introducing and leading OHS change must ensure they are trusted by those they are seeking to join them in the OHS change journey.

The above is adapted from Johnson D.W. “Reaching Out” (1990) . This text is recommended reading for those involved in safety change and leadership.

Employers need

Pride in company

Loyalty

Unity

Company growth

Workers need

Trust

Support

Development

Sense of self-worth

It therefore follows that if the employer gives X then employees give Y

Employer gives

Trust

Support

Development

Sense of self-worth

Workers give

Loyalty

Unity

Growth

Pride

(Private communication, Len Collie)

Health and Safety Leadership Specifically

International researchers have argued that leadership is one of the most critical determinants of workplace safety performance. Supported by over two decades of research, their findings indicate that leadership plays an integral role in developing and maintaining the safety climate in an organisation. (Andreychuk)

Benchmark Study on Safety Leadership

Over a 14 month period in 1994 – 1995 BHP Minerals carried out an extensive international safety benchmarking exercise with “best in safety class” companies throughout the world.

25 locations throughout the world participated in the study. An approximate 100 page report on findings is available should anyone wish to refer to it.

The following were recurring themes in the world’s best safety performers.

* = Key factors

1. * Executive management provides the impetus for safety performance. This means that senior management is not only committed to and supports safety, but that it insists on safety performance in a manner that is clearly understood and echoed at all levels.

2. * Management focus is a key to quality safety performance.

3. Existence of a company-wide framework or systematic, standardised approach to safety. The approach has performance standards that receive regular internal and external audits

4. Objectives are set and organisations work towards set targets for implementation of the objectives.

5. Safety personnel report in at the highest level in the organisations. They have mainly an advisory function. Management and supervision drives the safety program not the safety personnel.

6. Effective safety training targeted to identified needs at all levels. Induction training and detailed safety training for supervisors and managers was high on the priority list.

Regular safety meetings were seen as important.

7. Active personal involvement of senior management personnel in the safety program

8. Safety is considered in performance evaluations of all staff

9. Regular, detailed audits of the safety management system

10. Formal approaches to hazard identification and risk analysis, employees were fully involved in this

11. Formal emergency response procedures that were practiced and audited

12. The best in class addressed contractor safety before contractors were allowed on site, they pre-qualified them based on safety and made safety performance a contract condition. Contractors were expected to perform at the same safety level as permanent employees

13. High on the list of the ways the best in class built safety awareness were management participation and leadership, dissemination of information, safety meetings and rewards or recognition of performance

14. Safety is a condition of employment and dismissals occur for non-performance

15. Well-managed rehabilitation programs are in place

16. The best in class use medical examinations and testing to ensure fitness for duty

17. There were Employee Assistance Programs in place

18. There were off the job safety programs

19. There was an emphasis on vehicle / plant maintenance and driver / operator training programs.

20. There were extensive personal protective equipment training, maintenance and audit programs

21. Lock-out procedures were used instead of tag-out

22. Best in class managers and supervisors respond positively to safety issues that are raised

23. Best in class supervisors are responsible for safety auditing, investigating accidents, planned job observations and training

24. All levels in the organisation make decisions that reflect the philosophy “Safety first-Production will follow”

It is suggested Safety Management Systems be designed around these benchmarking findings.

Superior leadership, the key to safety

“But in the midst of this turnaround, although we were much improved on safety, we were still having a few lost time accidents. I wanted zero so I decided to give the order that any person could stop any job at any time for safety and that the job would not be re-started until that person was satisfied with the fix. This gave the union personnel the power to make it safe and then they would have no excuse for accidents. Well, the results were nothing short of fantastic.

In a period of 8 months we had stopped all lost time accidents and rarely thereafter even had minor ones. Success and everybody loved it. Convince people that you are serious about safety and they will respond.

My leadership strategy was a very important key to safety, productivity et al. Superior leadership is a strategy to inspire people to do more, dream more and learn more.

Values are the centerpiece of this strategy because employees respect actions which reflect high standards of all good values like industry, fairness, forthrightness, compassion, honesty etc while they disrespect actions reflecting low or negative standards. Actions reflecting high standards strongly influence employees towards emulating those standards, but the same emulation occurs for actions reflecting low standards.

Listening is the most important leadership skill of this strategy because people cannot be motivated or committed to something if they cannot “put in their 2 cents worth”, when they want and how they want, or if they cannot understand and be in on the decision process which affects them. Of such things is TRUST built”

Simonton B., Simonton Associates

The role of leaders in safety change

Krause (2004) speaks of nine factors that predict positive safety outcomes

1. Procedural justice

Does the individual perceive that the supervisor’s decision-making process to be fair?

1. Leader member exchange

If employees believe the supervisor will provide support and look out for their interests positive results will be found

2. Management credibility

Do employees perceive that what management says is consistent with what it does?

3. Perceived organizational support

Do employees perceive that they receive the support they need to accomplish the organisation’s objectives?

4. Workgroup relations

Do co-workers treat each other with respect, listen to each others ideas, help one another out and fulfill commitments?

5. Teamwork

To what extent do employees perceive that working with team members is an effective way to complete tasks?

6. Organisational value for safety performance improvement

The more employees perceive that the organization values safety goals, the more willing they will be to invest in those goals themselves.

7. Upward communication

Can the workers speak freely to their supervisor about safety concerns?

8. Approaching others

Do employees feel free to speak to each other about safety concerns?

Leading safety excellence-One company’s perspective

J.E.Jacobs Engineering and Constructors (2004) maintain the characteristics of successful leaders are

Establishing a vision, missions or goals

Communicating in a way that inspires

Making followers feel part of something important and satisfying

A good leader uses positive reinforcement because it is found most people repeat behaviour that results in positive consequences. Positive reinforcement has also proved to be the best way to maintain existing good behaviour. Positive reinforcement may consist of verbal acknowledgement, public praise and material awards. It may be immediate, during meetings, after giving a suggestion and when performing well.

J. E. Jacobs Engineering and Constructors also quote General Norman Schwartzkopf “To be a 21^st century leader you must have the competence and character to win and keep the trust of others”

How to be a safety leader

The author is grateful to Dave Cowley of HP Hood LLC, Chelsea , MA 02150 (October 2000)for sharing the company tip card.

Tips on how to be a Safety Leader

1. Walk the Talk

Visibly demonstrate safety by your actions, practice what you preach, wear proper protective equipment, employees look to you for example

2. Give Recognition

When you see an employee doing a job safely praise them for it,reward safety every change you get

3. Report All Incidents

Report all incidents no matter how slight, emphasise it is vital to be on the look-out for near-misses, minor mishaps and close calls instead of waiting for an actual injury to occur

4. Follow-Up

If a safety concern has been raised, always perform follow-up and provide feed-back to the employee

5. Ask Questions

Are employees using equipment that has been inspected (hand tools, forklifts, motor vehicles etc.)

Krause (2004) describes what excellent safety leadership looks like

1. Vision

The most senior executive must “see” what safety excellence looks like. The leader must convey his vision in a compelling manner through action.

2. Credibility

When an excellent safety leader says something others believe it and do not question his motives.

3. Collaboration

Collaboration encompasses working well with others encouraging input, helping others, expressing confidence in others support others decisions and gaining commitment.

4. Feedback and Recognition

An excellent safety leader provides effective feedback and recognises people for their accomplishments.

5. Accountability

An excellent safety leader gives workers a fair appraisal of safety efforts and results, clearly communicates peoples roles in safety and fosters the sense that people are responsible for the level of safety in their organisational unit.

6. Communication

As a great communicator the leader encourages people to deliver honest, complete information about safety (even if unfavourable) keeps people informed and communicates frequently and effectively up, down and across the organisation.

7. Values safety

An excellent safety leader acts to support safety values and principles. He leads by example and clearly communicates that safe behaviour is expected.

8. Action-oriented

An excellent safety leader is proactive rather than reactive in addressing safety issues. He gives timely, considered responses to safety concerns, demonstrates a sense of personal energy and urgency to achieve safety results and demonstrates a performance driven focus by delivering results with speed and excellence.

Emerging challenges in safety leadership

Having an individual who is a great safety leader is one thing, maintaining that leadership after that individual leaves the organisation is another thing. Someone much smarter than me said good leaders lead and great leaders develop other leaders.

Much is spoken about developing leadership, an equal amount of effort must be expended on developing “followship”.

What The OHS Professional Can Do To Improve Safety Leadership

1. Learn as much as you can about general and safety leadership. Reference to the sources of information in this paper will help.

2. Carry out a survey to identify the workforce perception of company leadership, there are various ways of going about this. Sometimes there is value in collating the answers onto histograms, displaying the histograms to the people who completed the survey, discussing the results and trying to establish why the responses are the way they are. This is best done by as senior a managers as possible who does not react defensively to criticism.

3. Survey the leadership styles of your leaders, various instruments are available. Carrying out a force field analysis on safety leadership may help to focus issues.

4. Identify the relevant learning needs of leaders using a formalized learning needs analysis.

5. Based on the above develop a safety leadership project plan in association with the stakeholders. Form a project team to manage the plan. Get management approval for the plan.

6. Launch and communicate the safety leadership project plan. My general advice with communication is to use face to face communication wherever possible, use the powerful influence of the work group supervisor and frame communication relevant to the work environment of the group being communicated to. High powered communications from senior management about the goals, mission, vision and the objectives of the company will not have much of an impact with many of the workers.

7. Carry out interactive leadership learning using Action and Experiential learning models. The learning must have a focus on the reality of the workplace. My advice is to check out both the process and content of potential providers very carefully, there are some snake oil salesmen in this space. I know it is not everybody’s thing but properly structured outdoor learning experiences can be a powerful means of leadership learning. Just ensure the focus is on the learning not the outdoor experience.

8. As a follow up to learning facilitation engage in authentic safety leadership tasks / activities / projects in the workplace. Progress must be regularly discussed, reviewed and evaluated, Celebrate the success of these. McDonalds use WOW projects in their leadership learning.

9. Meet with the people who attended the learning facilitation and discuss what is going well and what opportunities for improvement have been presented. I know it is not everybody’s thing but I encourage leaders to maintain a reflective journal about their leadership experiences, used properly this can be a powerful means of learning.

10. Evaluate, communicate and celebrate success. Establish what was learnt in the process and how you would do it better next time.

Leadership learning

I put a lot of effort through internet searches and posts on OHS discussion forums into identifying suppliers of general and safety leadership learning in Australia, I have to admit however that my searches could have easily missed good suppliers. Some suppliers did not return my communications, some wanted to license me to facilitate their material, some had glowing web sites and smooth salesmanship but when I asked for relevant detail it was unavailable, with a few suppliers the e-mail address on their web site bounced, a number of the organizations I approached were unable to produce what I considered robust content and process for their learning, some of the general leadership consultants that dabbled in safety leadership had only a minor and / or theoretical understanding of safety, some promised the world but delivered very little and some consultants want to lock you into bigger than Texas programs that consume an extreme of time, effort, resources and money.

My advice is to check out both the process and content of potential providers very carefully, there are some snake oil salesmen in this space.

There are a large number of learning organizations in Australia facilitating general leadership learning, a small number of learning organizations that integrate general leadership principles into safety and very few that teach specific safety leadership. I located a handful of providers who provide lower level, more operational safety leadership training for supervisors, the higher level, more strategic safety leadership learning does not appear to be well catered for.

The American Society of Safety Engineers two day safety leadership course conducted by Eddie Greer and the Canadian Society of Safety Engineers two day safety leadership course conducted by Kirby James are the only two safety leadership courses I could find at this stage that inspired much confidence in me. Of course you have to get to America and Canada to attend. If a sufficient number of Australians were interested in attending it may be possible to bring the instructors to Australia.

I identified some consultants that use neuroscience and psychological approaches to leadership, a small number apply this to safety. My initial impression is that this may be valuable and I intend to explore it further.

The top 10 things that are essential for safety leadership

1. Leaders must visibly demonstrate commitment and focus on safety. Good leaders lead, great leaders develop other leaders.

2. Leaders must set the safety example.

3. Leaders must create high safety expectations.

4. High values and detailed standards of performance must be used

5. Leaders must listen to and involve the workforce

6. Leaders must do what they say they will do.

7. Leaders must value safety goals.

8. Employees must be made to feel they are part of something important and satisfying.

9. Leaders must reinforce, reward and celebrate success.

10. Everyone must be held accountable for safety performance.

"Good leaders are those who know how to motivate and challenge people at all levels of an organisation to achieve their best performance. In addition they support and provide the resources necessary to ensure it is possible to meet the goals that have been set”.

Posted by Wayne J Harris, Linkedin, OHS Professionals, Australia,1/5/12

“What good leaders do is create an environment that allows people to do their jobs effectively and with confidence and in my time I have developed 5 rules.
1. Agree with people what is expected of them;
2. Give them the knowledge to do what is expected of them;
3. Give them the tools to do what is expected of them;
4. Give them permission to do what is expected of them; and
5. Monitor them to see if they are actually doing what is expected of them. If they are then a big pat on the back. If they are not talk to them and find out what is not happening and point them in the right direction.
The final thing good leaders do is have a vision and are consistent in moving toward fulfilling that vision. They do not make decisions based on opportunism”
Posted by richard hamilton ,Linkedin, Safety Institute of Australia, 4/5/12

Two questions for all OHS professionals

How do you rate on the above 10 things that are essential for safety leadership?

What will you do to ensure you are a safety leader not just a safety professional?

Conclusion

There is a vast body of knowledge on general leadership that can be applied to safety but this is not done frequently or well in many Australian companies. Many general leadership principles can be integrated into safety leadership effectively and easily. There is a smaller body of knowledge on safety leadership that very few people are aware of. More development of cost effective learning directed to safety leadership appears necessary in Australia.

Both general and safety leadership need to be applied at a higher level in Australia. The OHS professional can have a major impact on safety leadership by application of well developed interventions.

I will leave you with a quote “Managers do things right, leaders do the right thing, always”

(Private communication, S.Munro)

Other references

Readers are particularly directed to the paper “ Leadership Principles for The Safety Professional” presented by Eddie Greer at the A.S.S.E. Professional Development Conference, June 13, 2001, Anaheim, California.

During peer-review of this paper the author was made aware of the A.S.S.E. paper “Dimensions of supervisor effectiveness” by Jim Spigener,25/6/04.This paper is considered particularly useful on the topic of safety leadership, there are some limitation in use associated with this paper and potential readers are directed to www.bstsolutions.com

“Colin Powell on Leadership”, Baraka Training and Management, U.S.A. is a powerful presentation on general leadership that can readily be integrated into OHS.

For further detail refer to Health and Safety Leadership under leadership articles on ohschange.com.au

References

Alexander, G., Tales from the top, ISBN 0-7852-1335-X

Andreychuk, S., 2007, Heroic Leadership Workbook, One For Wellness Consulting, Canada

BHP Minerals, 1995,Safety Benchmarking Report, San Francisco

Carter, L., Ulrich, D., Goldsmith, M., 2005,Best Practices in Leadership Development and Organization Change ,John Wiley and Sons ,San Francisco

Claudian,365,Egyptian epic poet, exact source unknown

Greer, E.,2001, Leadership principles for the safety professional, American Society of Safety Engineers, Professional Development Conference, Anahiem, California

Jacobs, J.E. Engineering and Construction Company, Internal safety document ,U.S.A.

Johnson, D., 1990,Reaching Out, Prentice-Hall, New Jersey

Kouzes, J., 2005, The Art and Practice of Leadership Coaching, John Wiley and Sons, New Jersey

Krause,T.,2004,Influencing the behaviour of senior leadership, Professional Safety, June 2004,American Society of Safety Engineers, Des Plains, Illinois

Private Communication-Jan, 2007, D. Sayers, D. Sayers and Associates , Canada, Re Canada’s Ex-Chief of Defence Staff, General Dextraze, J.A.

Private Communication, April 2012, Len Collie, mysafetyconsultants

Private communication, May 2012, S. Munro, Bloomfield Group of Companies, Maitland, Australia

Simonton, B., 2004, How to unleash the power of people, Simonton Associates, http://www.bensimonton.com

Spigener, J.,2004, Dimensions of supervisor effectiveness, American Society of Safety Engineers, Des Plaines, Illinois

The Key to Electrical Appliance Test and Tagging

Riskex — Wed, 09 May 2012 04:18:50 +0000

The Key to Electrical Appliance Test and Tagging

As both a small business and an electrical maintenance provider, we have seen it all when it comes to appliance test and tagging. We would like to share the most important aspects of appliance test and tagging with you so that every business in Australia can prevent fines, litigation, injuries and even death.

1. Yes, you really have to test and tag

· AS/NZS 3760 – every workplace in Australia must complete test and tagging. It is a legal requirement governed by state based Work Cover bodies.

· It prevents injuries to your staff, fire hazards and the risk of electrocution

· Can assist in asset management and maintenance of equipment

2. And the paperwork

· Aside from the tag, you also need a report to describe the item, when it was tested, if it passed or failed and when it should be retested

· Keep results and a compliance certificate for at least seven years

· Reports can be requested when an audit is completed

3. One off is not good enough

· Test and tag must be completed regularly! This might be monthly, quarterly, bi-annually, yearly or 5 yearly depending on the type of equipment and it’s normal environment

4. Just about anyone can test and tag

· There is no formal qualification for test and tagging – you just need to be competent in using a Portable Appliance Tester (PAT). This can be done at a one day course

· But most people can’t do repairs

· In outsourcing appliance test and tagging, you are paying for quality and expertise. Many companies like our own operate teams of electricians and trained test and tag technicians for efficiency and quality of work

5. Bundling saves time and money

· If you do use an electrician, have them complete other services on site for your electrical safety and maintenance such as RCD testing, Emergency and Exit Light Testing, Thermal Imaging, Microwave Leakage Tests, Co2 Calibrations and Fire Protection Services

· This works out efficiently and cost effectively because they are already on site so no call out fee and providers often discount their services when there is a lot to be serviced

6. Choose a quality service provider with the capabilities to meet your needs

· Consider what your needs and requirements are-

i. Servicing outside of business hours

ii. Online report access

iii. Nation wide service

· Ensure you include these when speaking to providers

It is important to constantly manage appliance test and tagging along with electrical maintenance because it does save lives.

If ever you are in doubt, speak to an expert here at Tagteam Australia by calling 1300 368 042 or visiting our website at www.tagteamaustralia.com

Technorati Tags: asset management, testing and tagging

Defining Roles of Each Position in a Safety Culture

Riskex — Wed, 09 May 2012 00:10:50 +0000

Defining Roles of Each Position in a Safety Culture

One of the keys in determining the safety roles of individuals is to determine the following:

What role do you want each position or group to play in your management system?
What level of authority will the person holding these positions need to accomplish the goals and objectives?

The follow method can be used to accomplish this: write a general statement of responsibility and authority for each position.

While authority is built into managerial and supervisory roles and responsibilities, you may want to make changes as they relate to your management system. This can be accomplished by:

Clearly stating the scope of authority by indicating supervisory relationships
Establishing a budget that the position can use
Any other measures that describe what a person in this position can do without obtaining further approval

At this stage, do not attempt to describe each job’s specific tasks in detail. This is suggested wording for job descriptions, which of these responsibilities fit into your safety program and at what authority level and specific positions in your business should these responsibilities be assigned? The following are some examples of some assigned safety roles for each category:

Top managements establish and provide the leadership and resources for carrying out the stated company safety policy.
Managers and Supervisors help to maintain safe working conditions in their respective area of responsibilities.
Employees exercise care in the course of their work to prevent injuries to themselves and their coworkers.
Visitors, vendors, customers, and contractors comply with all safety requirements and/policies and procedures while at the workplace
Engineering helps to make sure that all equipment that could affect the safety of employees is selected, installed, and maintained in a manner that eliminates or controls potential hazards
Purchasing (sometimes called procurement) helps to make sure that safety equipment and materials are purchased in a timely manner, new materials, parts, and equipment are analyzed for potential hazards so that preventive measures or controls can be implemented; and that such materials, parts, and equipment are obtained in accordance with all applicable safety requirements
Safety Professionals help in assessing safety issues by working with management to resolve identified problems. In addition, the safety professional is a consultant to management.

Determining and Assigning Specific Responsibilities

Now that you have determined who should participate in your safety program, you need to develop written statements that specify what each position must do to help meet any stated goals and objectives.

When developing responsibilities for non-supervisory employees, be careful and do not confuse these responsibilities with specific work rules and safe work practices. A brief, general statement about the employee’s responsibility to understand and follow rules and safe work practices is more appropriate.

You should assign the details for carrying out your management system to the same individual who are responsible for plant operations, the office environment, production, and other areas that should be included. In this way, you build safety into the management structure as firmly as the production environment. Be sure that each assigned responsibility comes with the authority and resources needed to fulfill the requirements.

Summary

After you have developed the safety responsibilities and specific-specific activities for each position, you must then communicate your requirement to all employees. You may find it useful to combine all these written statements of safety responsibility into one document. Then post it or circulate it to all employees involved. Discuss the job descriptions and responsibilities in one-on-one, face-to-face, meetings with all employees who will be responsible for carrying out the safety responsibilities. Keep a copy of this document and always refer to it when meeting with employees, no matter if you are in a general meeting or performance reviews.

Many managers can be perceived as risk-takers, willing to put their business against others in a competitive world. However, there is one gamble that is a true loss for management to consider: a gamble on safety and the risk of incidents that cause injuries to employees or damage to company property.

To reduce risks effectively, you must address safety along with production, quality control, and costs. To accomplish this task you must set specific goals and objective to provide a service or produce a quality product efficiently without an injury. Too often, that is seen as something to be considered as time permits, over and above regular business activities.

For your management system to be successful, you need to assign responsibility to specific positions, departments, and staff levels in your organization. The following steps can help you to make sure that your safety program elements are communicated properly:

Review your current structure. Understand what you want it look like
Determine what part each job position should have in the safety program
Determine what authority and resources are necessary to carry out these roles and responsibilities
Determine and assign safety responsibilities, and write responsibilities into each employees job description
Communicate with all employees by discussing the responsibilities and authority in face-to-face meetings.

http://safetycultureplus.com/defining-roles-of-each-position-in-a-safety-culture/

Technorati Tags: defining roles, safety culture, safety leadership

Safety Leadership: What Makes a Great Leader

Riskex — Tue, 08 May 2012 23:40:24 +0000

Safety Leadership: What Makes a Great Leader

Latest post by Ruth Jenkins from SINA Solutions – Read the whole article here

Safety leadership is the key ingredient to the safety success in an organization. When a leader is able to make his expectations clear, provide support, and foster a safety culture within a company, they significantly improve its safety performance.

How to Become a Great Safety Leader

Are you the Leader?

All leaders have certain qualities that make them effective. These qualities include:

Commitment
Confidence
Empathy
Clarity

Commitment goes a long way as a leader. When you are committed to safety regulations, you follow them. When you follow them, you pose as an example for employees to follow.

The commitment you show to your employees helps them see that safety is important and they seek you as the authority. Capturing this authority is how a leader becomes the one that can direct employees to the right things to do.

Read the rest here

Technorati Tags: great leader, safety leadership, safety success

Safety Censorship

Riskex — Tue, 08 May 2012 23:32:55 +0000

One of our guest Authors, Phil La Duke was unceremoniously dumped from a LinkedIn Forum (and Aussie one!) for daring to publish this article. It is heavy duty and provocative but one needs to look beyond taking it personally or getting offended (I would be concerned if I was offended by this) and at the powerful message it it sending. What do you reckon?????

Read Phil’s other articles here

An Open Letter to Safety Professionals from the 4,690 Workers Who Died on the Job in the United States in 2010 – READ IT HERE

Note: I thought long and hard about writing what you are about to read. Whenever I have taken issue with the self-congratulatory tone and self-righteous complacency that I see dangerously prevalent among safety professionals the ensuing storm of bile and abuse heaped on me has, at times, made me consider bagging it—stopping the blog, ending the speeches, and retiring from my gigs as a safety columnist. But after more than a decade of decline the workplace death toll in the U.S. has risen. In 2010, while some of you were jetting off to Brazil on your citizen diplomat boon-doggle an average of 13 workers died a day. If you get offended by the truth; stop reading. If you do read on, save us both time and aggravation and spare me your outraged venomous hate mail, I don’t want to hear it and all it does is convince me of the veracity of my message. What follows is perhaps my magnum opus of provocative work. I dedicate it to my father who died of me, my brother-in-law who died of lung cancer after working for decades on Zug Island, once listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the dirtiest square mile on the planet Earth, my brother who suffered permanent memory loss after an industrial accident, my many friends who died in industrial accidents but most especially to Patrick Burger (and others like him) who has taken such extraordinary measures to try attack and insult me in an effort to silence my message.

Dear Safety Guy:

I hope you are doing well and are enjoying this lovely weather with family and friends. I don’t want to your harsh buzz or bust up the barbecue, but I died in the workplace this week and I want you to know that I am deeply disappointed in you. You see, I trusted you and you failed me. And not just me, 12 other guys died along side me and 13 of us died yesterday, and another 13 tomorrow, in fact, every day; day in and day out. 4,690 of us in all…wait that’s not quite right another 50,000 or so died from illnesses caused by working waste deep in poisons or breathing in chemicals that would kill us slowly, horribly.

Some of us died because we did stupid things, some of us weren’t adequately trained, some of us under estimated the dangers we faced, and some of us over estimated our skills, but none of us expected to die. None of reported for work expecting to get killed. None of our lives were any less valuable than yours and before you get all self righteous it wasn’t my job not to die, it was YOUR job to make sure my job didn’t kill me. But I DID die, and I doubt you will ever get a verbal warning.

As I write this I can see you squirm. Does it make you uncomfortable for me to hold you accountable? Is it unfair that I blame you for something that I did that killed me? After all, how—you ask—can I hold you accountable for my own stupidity? You didn’t tell me to do the things that I did to day that ultimately got me killed. But it was your job to keep me alive. I certainly didn’t do those things that I did because I wanted more butt time (as I’ve heard you describe to your colleagues at conferences or huddled around a coffee talking about how stupid we all are). I screwed up, and that screw up got me killed. Everyone makes mistakes, but nobody should have to die because of a mistake made at work. I counted on you to anticipate and correct the things that would kill me before I got hurt; where were you when I died?

I really liked the safety BINGO, and I sure loved the extra money when we got as a bonus for zero injury days. Were you too stupid to know that these things created an environment where we were essentially bribed to stay quiet about injuries? Or did you just recklessly disregard the fact that you were creating incident statistics that lulled the decision makers into a false sense of security regarding our risk level? I knew what you were doing was wrong but I wasn’t about to turn the whole company against me and speak up. Congratulations on having such a great safety record; how does my death look on your resume?

I can only imagine how disappointed you were to learn that worker fatalities in the U.S. has spiked—I think we all figured that when we sourced all that the really dangerous work out to the Third World that we were home free. I feel kind of bad about it now—the after life is full Third World workers who bought it because their lives were thought to be so much cheaper than mine. It turns out they weren’t that much different from me. They had families who loved them, wives and children who counted on them. All they wanted to do was go to work, make a buck, and come home safe. They had lives snatched away from them same as me; just cause we showed up for work.

I know that as you read this you are tempted to excuse yourself and tell yourself that my death isn’t your fault. That management put profits before safety; that the Union shut down what you wanted to do; that you can’t protect people when they won’t listen to you, and all that other crap I’ve heard you say a thousand times. Stop feeling sorry for yourself; you aren’t the victim here. Before you blame management… the last time I checked most of you ARE management. The same goes for leadership—isn’t that what you are supposed to be, a leader? If a juggler can’t do his job guess what? he drops a couple of balls; no harm, no foul. If YOU are incompetent, people DIE; I DIED. 4,695 other people died. If you can’t hack it, get out of the game. Stop worrying about the condition of your 401K and retire or change careers; become a florist, that way the only thing at risk of dying because of your ineptitude is a dozen carnations.

Remember how much we all enjoyed your children’s safety poster contest? Now it just seems sad. How about all those pictures of people doing unsafe things? Remember how we’d laugh about how stupid they were? somehow it’s just not that funny anymore. Did you really think you were making a difference with that crap?

Think I’m being too hard on you? Think you deserve some credit for doing your best? Screw you, I can get a baboon in here to do its best. Your best doesn’t measure up. Your best gets people killed. And I don’t believe for a second that you were doing your best when I died. It’s not like you weren’t warned. When people posted things on blogs or magazines that were critical of your profession you chose to get indignant and hammered out a “how dare you insult the hard working men and women of the august profession of worker health and safety blah blah blah”, you remember that don’t you? It was a hell of a lot easier to write an indignant email telling your peers to tell that guy to shut up than it was to consider for one microsecond that you might have to do something different. And now even in the face of my death you are still too arrogant to consider that there might be a better way.

Was it the culture that killed me? Did you see all the signs that we were ripe for a fatality? Did you storm around the office saying if someone doesn’t do something that someone was going to die? Did “you tell the bastards”? Well if you continued to take a paycheck in a hopeless environment where leaders didn’t care about the safety of the workers I decry you as a craven and fool.

I know you see yourself as under appreciated and doing a thankless job. Well I’m dead and thanks for nothing. You aren’t a hero; you don’t even deserve a footnote in my obituary. You get no thanks because there is nothing you’ve done that deserves the smallest modicum of gratitude.

Before you wrap yourself in the blanket of “there was no way I could have prevented his death” there are plenty of people working for change and we NEED change. These people work against impossible odds against people just like you. You have a decision: you can either be on the side of change or be part of the forces lined up against it. You can either save lives or save your twisted sense of self righteousness; you choose, and for the first time in your life be prepared to live with the consequences of your choices; I doubt you have that in you.So what now? My role in this argument ends at the grave. What will you do next? Between now and Monday, 26 more workers will die in the U.S. and ten times that worldwide. Will it just be a statistic? Will it be a shame? What will you differently in response to my death? Do you care even a little bit? Are you more concerned about saving lives or saving your own ass?

Sincerely,

4,695 dead workers and counting

Technorati Tags: safety professionals, Zero Harm

Employee Participation Part of Your Safety Culture

Riskex — Tue, 08 May 2012 12:43:42 +0000

Our newest guest author is James Roughton (see his Author box below). You will be able to read all of his articles here: James Roughton

Employee Participation Part of Your Safety Culture

The success of any safety management system depends on the interaction with all of the employees in the organization. Therefore, as part of management, you do not have to solve all of the safety issues alone. You already have great resources available that you need to learn how to utilize, your employees. The ultimate goal of this interaction is to develop systems and/or methods that will help reduce the employee’s exposure to hazards. This not only makes good business sense, but also the right thing to do. The key is that employees are valuable problem-solvers because they are closest to the action and know the job, steps, and task better than anyone, as they interact with potential hazards daily. With this interaction between employees and the management team, better solutions are developed and implemented.

While I was researching and writing this chapter, I was watching a Reality TV show called “Red Jacket Firearms – Sons of Guns,” a gun show where they build, repair, and modify all types of guns for their customers. There was one situation that occurred that I thought would tie this chapter together. The following is the quote that I like, as in my opinion, it sets the stage for employee participation. The Manager of the shop wanted an historic cannon used in WWI, restored. As he approached his gunsmiths to talk about his idea on the restoration, the immediate response from his employees was, “The gun barrel is broken, what are you going to do with it?” The Manager came back and stated: “That is the difference between me and you, I do not look at problems, I only look at solutions.” The employee’s response was: “But who are you looking to solve the solution, the people with the problem!”

Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success. – Henry Ford

Employee participation provides the means that everyone can develop and express their own opinion, suggestions, and commitment to safety, for both themselves and their co-workers.

I remember some time ago, I was discussing with a manager why he could not get his employees to participate. He stated that he had done everything that he knew to get this accomplished and could not understand why no one wanted to help him. After discussing this issue with him a few minutes, I made a statement that I think shocked him, “Have you asked them?” I asked him to take a walk with me and just talk to some of his most difficult employees. We talked to the employees and asked them if they would like to participate in resolving safety issues. The overwhelming response was “YES.” So the moral of the story is all you need to do is Just ask the employee if they want to participate in the process, instead of trying to mandate participation. If they know that you are serious and are willing to listen to their suggestion, comments, feedback, most likely all employees will want the opportunity to work with you.

Guidelines for Employee Participation

In order to provide employees with the opportunity to participate in activities such as establishing, implementing, and evaluating your safety management system and programs that support the management system you must set the stage. There are some basic key elements that can be used as a guidance to achieve involvement at the highest level from your employees. Some of these activities include the following:

Regularly communicating with all employees in regards to workplace and safety-related issues
Providing all employees with complete access to relevant information of specific programs
Identifying methods to allow employees to become familiar with assessing and identifying hazards, prioritizing results of assessment, training, and program evaluation
Establishing a way to report injuries, near misses, loss producing events, and hazards found promptly
Providing prompt responses to all reports and suggested recommendations
Allowing employees to conduct workplace assessments
Allowing all employees to be involved in defining methods to identify specific hazards and fix identified hazards under their control. This can be accomplished by utilizing a team to help develop a Job Hazard Analysis (JHA) to detail safety-related issues in each step and task for the job, thereby developing solutions to safe work practices. Refer to Chapter for a detail instructions on how to develop the JHA
Allowing employees to develop and revise the workplace safety rules
Providing training for both current and newly hired/transferred and seasoned employees on site-specific safety issues
Assisting in developing and presenting safety-related information at safety meetings
Conducting and participating in incident investigations
Supporting co-workers by providing feedback on risks and assisting them in eliminating hazards
Performing a pre-use or change analysis for new equipment or processes in order to identify hazards up front before use
Providing the time and resources for employees to participate on joint labor-management committees and other advisory or specific purpose committees

We have just covered a long list of activities that you can use to get your employees involved in the safety process. This is only a basic list and can be expanded as necessary.

Many of these activities require specific training to ensure that each employee can perform their assigned functions proficiently using these techniques. The training does not need to be elaborate and can be conducted at the workplace by employees who are appropriately trained.

You need to recognize the value of employee participation and the increasing number and variety of employee participation arrangements can raise legal concerns. It makes good sense to consult with your human relations to make sure that your employee participation program conforms to any legal requirements.

Adapted from Draft Proposed Safety And Health Program Rule: 29 CFR 1900.1, Docket No. S&H-0027, public domain

Adapted from OSHA Web e-Tools, public domain

http://safetycultureplus.com/employee-participation-part-of-your-safety-culture/

Authors Box:

James Roughton, CSP, Six Sigma Black Belt

Safety Professional Experienced in Safety Culture, Social Media, Web Technology, WordPress

Please Visit by Websites and consider Joining my email list!

Safety Culture Plus
Job Hazard Analysis Plus
James Roughton
My Job Hazard Analysis
Deep Creek Shores Home Association

Technorati Tags: employee participation, safety culture

Accidents Photos From Yesteryear

Riskex — Tue, 08 May 2012 12:04:54 +0000

Accidents Photos From Yesteryear

Would stuff like this still happen? Probably!!!!

See the full story and all the images here: http://todayswhisper.com/accidents-from-the-past

Technorati Tags: accident photos, safety images

How to Give an Unforgettable Safety Presentation

Riskex — Tue, 08 May 2012 11:51:57 +0000

George’s Safety Reflections SEE MORE HERE

How to Give an Unforgettable Presentation (Failure is not an option) by George Robotham www.ohschange.com.au

Introduction

The following has been assisted by formal learning / education but largely represents critical reflection on the writer’s personal practice. The people who say an amount of it is based on the writer’s stuff-ups would be quite correct

The essentials

The number one thing you must do is identify your audience’s needs, the number 2 thing you must do is satisfy those needs

“When reading your correspondence the reader must say “Wow” in the first third of the page”

“When listening to your presentation the listener must say “Wow” within the first 3 minutes”

The guidance

Most of us are not naturally gifted speakers and need some assistance to make an impact. The following will make your presentation unforgettable-

Do not focus on what you are going to talk about but focus on your outcomes, objectives and end results (What you have achieved for the participant)

If you want to get exposure as a speaker volunteer

Preparing a speech - Talk to the audience first, demonstrate a unique perspective, orientate to the future, be provocative , use relevant aids, let your audience know you have done your homework

Preparing a speech – Outcomes, time frame & requirements, key learning points, rough draft, supporting stories, aids and examples, build the opening and conclusion ,practice the speed and adjust the timing.

Need to define and articulate how you will improve the participants condition.

Tell your audience what you expect of them early up

Have a power sound bite – What single idea do I want the audience repeating as they leave the room?, What single idea do I want them repeating to their friends and colleagues the next day? Have the power sound bite in the introduction, repeated in the body and in the conclusion.eg. Leaders do what they say they will do-L.D.W.T.S.T.W.D.

Have a variety of presentation styles to cope with differing learning styles.

It helps to appeal to your audiences emotions-Power, pride, courage, self-interest, convention, posterity, sociability

Use clear, simple messages

Good visual aids are clear, simple, original, easy to see, easy to grasp, stimulating, creative, reinforce your messages

Good messages will trigger an emotional response

Use facts to support your message but do not use facts as the message

Super prepare for an important presentation, particularly rehearse your opening & conclusion so it comes out strong & clear

Sometimes some comment on why you are qualified to talk on this topic is appropriate

At the beginning tell them what you are going to do, why you are going to do it and how you will do it.

Research the topic thoroughly bearing in mind that not everything you find on the internet will be credible. As well as looking at the theory it helps to talk to people who have practically implemented strategies.

Throw in a bit of humour

Have an interesting anecdote that touches the emotions of my audience. The following is something that got me a lot of applause with a Canadian audience on a talk about safety

$ 100 note

Hold up an Australian $ 100 note (worth about $95 Canadian)

“Who would like me to give you this $ 100 note?

Show of hands

Crumple it up

Who would like me to give you this $ 100 note?

Show of hands

Stand on it, jump on it and grind it into the ground

Who would like me to give you this $ 100 note?

Show of hands

That right, it still has value despite what has been done to it and many people want it

YOU are like this $ 100 note, throughout your life trying to improve safety there will be many people who put you down and try to grind you into the dirt

Remember that YOU, like the $ 100 note still have value despite what others have tried to do to you and many people will want you.”

Note The storey above is adaptable to a wide range of situations with a bit of thought

Know your audience

Make a conscious effort to slow down your speech to slightly slower than normal conversation

Use a few Power-Points but not “Death by Power-Point”. Make the size of the font readable down the back of the room. A lot of people get annoyed if you stand in front of them and read out what they can easily see on the screen. A bit of clip art and colour helps to liven up the power-points. Leave your power-points on screen long enough to be read.

Try to build in a range of activities for the participants that reinforce your message. A controversial question for discussion is sometimes useful

Rehearse your presentation sufficiently that you do not have to refer to your notes too often, you thus maintain eye contact with your audience.

Make it fun not hard work

Treat your audience with respect

Do not try to cram too much information into too short a time frame, people will become overloaded & give up. Concentrate on the MUST KNOWS

Avoid lecture style presentations where you read from your notes unless the presentation is very short, suggest a maximum of 5 minutes. Instead prepare speakers notes ( big enough for you to read them in poor light) with key points and talk to the key points, this will require a bit of rehearsal. Alternatively use the key points on your power point presentation as your notes, pays to have the hard copy notes as a back up just in case for a number of reasons that could crop up when you rely on technology, you cannot use the power-points.

Sometimes a “Where to from here” is appropriate at the end

If time permits encourage questions

Always pilot your presentation and react to comments

The idea is for the audience to get lost in the topic, give them word pictures they can relate to

Give something of yourself eg. a personal storey, to build rapport with the audience

Always identify the range of the audience and target your presentation appropriately

Identify the purpose of the presentation and the one, single message you want to transmit. Paint a picture to give the message

A good approach is to make a point and then tell a storey about that point or tell a storey to make a point. Indigenous people are good storey tellers and this is a powerful technique.

Use pauses and silence to emphasise points

Have links between sections so audience can see where you are going.

If you have practical exercises that require participants to give feedback have a roving microphone person. It pays for you to have a lapel microphone so you are not stuck in one spot during your presentation.

Check out the venue beforehand in case any adjustments to your presentation are required.

Try to get the audience close to you.

Go along and see learn how the professional speakers do it-For me Laurie Lawrence, Nick Farr-Jones and General Norman Schwarzkopf were fantastic and could be learnt from.

The presentations that seem so easy and natural only got that way through lots of work, rehearsal and preparation.

Do not be surprised that you have to spend 5-10 times in preparation as presentation.

20 Sure-Fire Ways to Stuff-up a Learning Program

The design, facilitation and evaluation of effective learning programs is very complex. There is much more to it than getting a bunch of people together and talking to them .

How to stuff-up a learning program

Do not develop learning objectives to guide design
Do not use multiple sense learning
Do not make sessions interactive
Do not have supervisors reinforce the expectation lessons learnt are valued and will be put in practice
Do not follow-up with learners
Foster “Death by Power-Point”
Do not use Action and Experiential learning models
Do not foster critical reflection
Do not allow learners to play with the concepts
Do not use humour to reinforce your messages
Put the focus on the facilitator instead of the learner
Stuff the learner full of information
Do not use the advantages of SAY & DO
Be academic rather than practical
Make learning hard work instead of fun
Do not have consequences for inappropriate behaviours
Do not treat learners with respect
Do not give regular meaningful feedback
Do not reward good performance
Do not use Learning Needs Analysis to guide program design

The Use of Humour

Laughter is the best medicine!

Much is written about the benefits of humour, you can look it up on the internet if you like. I will not mention this here as I am sure you will have a good intuitive idea of what I am talking about.

In the days when I used to work in the mining industry I remember being in a meeting in Rockhampton about a series of personal damage occurrences (“Accidents”) that had occurred. Two representatives of the company that manufactured the equipment involved were in attendance along with a number of industry Safety Advisers. The manufacturer representatives would not acknowledge that the design of their equipment was a factor and were spinning us their company line about how safe their equipment was. Tempers progressively got more frayed and we were getting nowhere. My workmate Terry Condon came out with a classic, humorous one-liner that diffused the tension and set the scene for meaningful progress.

That was the first time I have seen humour used in a meaningful way in business. I watched Terry in action after this and noted his frequent effective use of humour.

Humour can be used effectively in formal and informal presentations and in general interaction in business and non-business life.

Avoid humour that focuses on religion, politics, race, class, sex, age, physical appearance. To use any of these will run the risk of upsetting someone. I hear you asking what the hell else is there that I can use? The only safe butt of your humour is yourself! You can also use mythical people whose characteristics you do not describe.

There are joke books you can buy but storeys from daily life are more acceptable.

Be funny early and often.

Introduce the humour in the general flow of your conversation.

For a major presentation rehearse and listen to yourself on a tape recorder.

Like many things in life humour follows the 7 P rule: “Prior Preparation and Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance”.

If giving a major presentation have a small pilot first and respond to the comments you receive.

Try to use humour that relates to things others see as an annoyance.

Know your audience and try to relate to them.

Quotations from famous people are often sources of humour, you can search these on the internet, Laurie Lawrence’s web-site has a lot of quotations.

Stretching the truth is forgivable.

Do not take yourself too seriously.

You can use a story to illustrate a point.

The Readers Digest and t.v. comedy shows are good sources of material. It also helps you to observe how the professionals use humour.

Poking fun at the establishment may be an appropriate and inoffensive way of using humour.

Appropriate self-disclosure can be an effective way of enhancing communications and interpersonal relationships. I was introduced to and practised appropriate self-disclosure in a Psychology subject. You will find in a new relationship if you reveal a little bit of you (provided it is appropriate)the other party will reveal a little bit of them(provided it is appropriate), if you then reveal a little bit more of you(provided it is appropriate) they will reveal a little bit more of them (provided it is appropriate), and so the cycle goes on. This is very simple, incredibly effective and I use it all the time to build relationships. Of course if you really hang all your dirty washing out it will probably stuff up the process.

Telling a humorous story about yourself can be a great way of starting the appropriate self-disclosure process. If you show you are prepared to pile crap on yourself it will influence how you and your message are perceived.

Being an OHS person I attend a number of safety conferences and courses, these are inevitably dull, dry and boring affairs. It is a pity things are taken so seriously! Perhaps the same thing happens in your speciality? If you are a presenter who uses effective humour, presents well and has a relevant message you will be invited back.

The presentation secrets of Steve Jobs (Ex-C.E.O. of Apple)

Transmit passion for your topic

Write out the 3 key messages you want your audience to receive

Offer evidence or testimonials, have third-party reviews

Use video where you can

Early up answer the question about why your audience should care

Rally people to a better future

Use groups of 3 rather than long lists of topics

Introduce an antagonist, reveal the conquering hero who makes life better

Give an experience not a presentation

Your audience checks out after 10 minutes, give them something different or something to do

Keep it simple

Use photos wherever possible

Paint a picture, the more strikingly visual your presentation the more people will remember it

The brain switches off to boring things, use variety

Deliver what you promise

Give credit to your helpers

Use demonstrations

Reveal a Holy Shit moment

People remember how you made them feel not what you said

Use a minimum of notes so you maintain eye contact with the audience

It only looks effortless when you put in a hell of a lot of practice

Try to anticipate questions

Relentless preparation is the way to beat nerves

Never read out a prepared speech

You might like to read Presentation S.O.S. by M Wiskup

George Robotham, Certificate IV Workplace Training & Assessment, Diploma in Workplace 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),Accredited Workplace Health & Safety Officer (Queensland),Justice of the Peace (Queensland), Australian Defence Medal, Brisbane, Australia, fgrobotham@gmail.com, www ohschange.com.au, 07-38021516, 0421860574

Technorati Tags: adult learning, safety presentation, safety training

Implementation of a learning management system

Riskex — Tue, 08 May 2012 06:52:56 +0000

George’s Safety Reflections SEE MORE HERE

Implementation of a learning management system

In the early 1990’s XYZ mining company revolutionised their approach to learning. Existing learning programs were examined and costed, many millions were being spent and it became obvious much of this money was wasted.

2 An exhaustive learning needs analysis was carried out. This worked formed the basis for the introduction of competency-based learning in the Australian mining industry.

3 Doctor Stephen Billett of Griffith University was engaged to research preferred and effective modes of delivering learning. Not surprisingly learning by doing coached by a content expert was favoured. A lot of people saw classroom learning as largely a waste of time. Carrying out authentic tasks in the workplace was seen as important.

4 External trainers and internal trainers, of which I was one, had to attend a week course with a unit that specialised in advanced learning techniques from the Qld. Department of Education. This emphasised interactive techniques and Action and Experiential learning.

5 Consultants were engaged to prepare self-paced, competency-based modules in many areas. The modules were given to learners and they were assigned a content expert to refer to as needed. Some modules articulated to a National certificate IV . My role was to do the T.N.A., write modules, liaise with the consultants writing the modules, assess learners, coach learners and where necessary facilitate the modules.

6 A system was introduced whereby the supervisor had to engage with the learners to develop an action plan to implement the lessons learnt from a learning experience.

7 A matrix of mandatory and recommended learning for all levels of employees was developed.

8 The performance appraisal process put a high emphasis on learning with the result that individual learning plans were developed for all employees.

9 The organisation truly became a “Learning organisation” and a high value was put on learning.

10 A communications plan was developed to communicate learning processes to employees. Various available media were used to communicate learning change.

11 Development of the learning materials involved many project teams and a philosophy that “When initiating change, People support what they create” was used.

12 Assessors of the self-paced learning modules completed learning and set about assessing learners

13 It was summed up for me when I was sitting in a mine manager’s office that overlooked the coal stockpile and the mine manager said” There was a time when I had evidence the bulldozer operators did not always know what they are doing and the machines were not always well maintained, since this new training I no longer have these concerns”

The precursors to success were the very thorough learning needs analysis and the establishment of the preferred and most effective means of learning.

Technorati Tags: consultants, learning management, mining

Incident Investigation and the Limits of Risk Imagination

Riskex — Sun, 06 May 2012 13:56:07 +0000

Another purler by Dr Robert Long, that may make you rethink your propensity to go the checklist!. If you liked this article then you should read the whole series: CLICK HERE. I highly recommend you check out Rob’s new book “RISK MAKES SENSE”

My favourite line: “Finally, we could spend a bit more time with our little kids and start practicing a way of thinking we have devalued for far too long and bring some fun back into making sense of risk.”

Incident Investigation and the Limits of Risk Imagination

‘Everything you can imagine is real’ – Pablo Picasso

I often get asked to investigate incidents from a cultural perspective. Whilst, most investigations focus on physical detail and sequence, I explore cultural and psychological causes. This is undertaken within the framework that incident investigations are about ‘fact finding’ not ‘fault finding’. Whilst all of the physical elements of investigation are most necessary I take a particular focus on what cultural and socialpsychological factors contributed to a physical outcome. I recently supported an organisation investigating their Lost Time Injuries (LTIs) over a 10 year period and determined that 90% of all their LTIs were primarily caused by psychosocial and culture factors. Their investigations has attributed causation to 90% physical factors.

Most of the key elements of what makes up culture are hidden. Culture is detected through physical indicators such as; symbols, artifacts, language, discourse, appearance and behavior. Culture is about these things but much more about the attitudes, values, mentalities and beliefs that are embedded in them.

For the purposes of this brief discussion I wish to look at just one psychocultural factor: imagination. Recently I was involved in an incident investigation and this was the primary cause. A culture that can’t imagine is an unsafe culture, a culture that can’t learn is an unsafe culture and a culture which under-reports is an unsafe culture. Imagination is one of the greatest resources organisations can access in the management of risk. Organisations and individuals that can’t imagine can only see in the ‘here and now’, such organisations struggle to doubt and entertain possibilities and therefore have poor capability in managing the unexpected.

So what do we know about imagination? Imagination steps beyond the confines of obedience and submission to standards, it understands them as a minimum. Imagination comes from experience, trial and error, play, experimentation, the vitality of faith, inquiry, critical thinking, storytelling, invention, creativity, reflection and the wisdom of what Weick calls ‘bricolage’. Imagination transcends the immediate and thinks of the unexpected, and knows how to do so.

Checklist thinking can only think about what’s in the checklist. In the case of this recent incident I investigated, there was no question in the safe work method statement about wind or changes in temperature, changes in climate or changes in combinations of these elements and so no one on the job could ‘imagine’ that these things would trigger a collapse. The learning and encouragement of imagination is not on the radar of many organisations. The enemy of imagination is busyness.

Just look at the last 20 OHS conferences you have heard about and see if the topic of the imagination is present in discussions about hazards, risk and safety?

I love spending time with my two granddaughters, one is 2 and the other 4 years of age. We play imagination games all the time: we make objects into mermaids; we become cats and dogs from cartoons; we sails across waters to the cubby house and hide in the corner of the bedroom from monsters. If we can think of it, we become it. The early years of childhood are all about imagination and it’s only later that our school system tries to knock such thinking out of them. It’s then we commence devaluing the imagination subjects such as art and music and elevate the importance of maths and science. By the time we get to our first occupation art and music are relegated for the majority of us to hobby status. Who would have thought that the same skills we engage in our hobbies would be so vital in making sense of risk.

I heard of a large company the other day after a series of incidents whose only solution to the problem of conformity to safe work method statements was to invent a checklist to check the checklist and then audit the checklist that was used to check the original checklist. Confused? Maybe not, but I’m sure the workers are. When we have 3000 safe work method statements on site and each one is 50 pages, we need to stop and ask what we are doing to ourselves and our imagination.

When it comes to the imagination and risk, here are a few things to consider, we need to:

1. Understand that systems-only thinking creates systems-dependent thinkers.

2. Change the mindset which tries to ‘engineer out idiots’. The more we keep this myth going, the more we create people on site who can’t think.

3. Think more about what is not on the checklist that what is in it. And for heaven’s sake, not just keep adding to the checklist.

4. Explore what is unseen just as much that is seen. We must ask the question in our safety observations: what can I not see or hear?

5. Limit language which only fosters small picture thinking. Zero talk for example creates micro-factor thinking. BP had maintained zero discourse for years before they couldn’t imagine what happened at the Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig in 2010. In fact, the week of the disaster they were bragging about their zero mantra.

6. Encourage exercises in imagining the unexpected, what Weick says is encouraging the ‘bad news’.

7. Speak much more about how we make sense of risk rather than generating fearfulness which limits imagination.

8. Take safety walks and conversation with no checklist but simply a blank paper and a host of open questions.

9. Spend more time in visual thinking, using concept maps etc. when we tackle problems and issues.

10. Bring people into our work groups who don’t think like us, who are outside the club, even outside our industry and ask them what they see.

Finally, we could spend a bit more time with our little kids and start practicing a way of thinking we have devalued for far too long and bring some fun back into making sense of risk.

Author’s Resource Box

Dr Robert Long

PhD., (UWS) BEd., (USA) BTh., (SCD) MEd., (Syd) MOH (La Trobe), Dip T., Dip Min., MACE, CFSIA.

Executive Director – Human Dymensions Pty Ltd

Rob has a creative career in teaching, education, community services, government and management.

Rob is engaged by organisations because of his expertise in culture, learning, risk and social psychology. He is a skilled presenter and designer of learning events, training and curriculum.

Web Link: www.humandymensions.com

Blog: http://web.me.com/robertlong2/HDblog/Blog/Blog.html

Technorati Tags: checklists, incidents, risk, safety culture, safety slogan

Don’t Jump To Safety Management Solution

Riskex — Tue, 01 May 2012 07:17:09 +0000

Latest article by Guest Author, renowned Safety Writer, Alan D. Quilley CRSP. Alan is the author of “The Emperor Has No Hard Hat – Achieving REAL Safety Results” and “Creating & Maintaining a Practical Based Safety Culture”. Read all of his articles HERE

He’s the president of Safety Results Ltd., a Sherwood Park, Alberta, OHS consulting company. You can see more of his work through his Safety Blog – http://safetyresults.wordpress.com .

Don’t Jump To “Safety Management” Solution

If you are like me, there are times when you take the time to reflect on why you believe what you do. I’m often scanning the horizon for innovative ideas and reflecting on the historic maturation and changes in my beliefs. There have been significant events that have resulted in my changing my fundamental beliefs in the style and content of the safety management process I use to consult with. The first such event was my reading of the NSC Accident Prevention Manual and their initial approaches which were based on Heinrich’s theories (link to Article). The next significant text that influenced me was Frank Bird Jr.’s Total Loss Control. Reading William W. Lowrance’s “Of Acceptable Risk” caused profound changes in my thinking about what safety was and how to accomplish it. Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People and Dan Petersen’s Safety By Objectives…both had a tremendous effect on my thinking and caused me to shift my beliefs about how safety management systems work and how they could be successful. Of course W. Edwards Deming’s body of work probably affected us all.

I have come to believe certain classic management models have enduring features that make them as true today as they were when they were originally published. Some I believe missed the mark and have not stood the test of time as being valid. Taylor, Maslow, McGregor, Skinner, Drucker, Petersen, Deming all have had enduring theories and management systems observations that have, in my humble opinion, stood the test of time. It is important if we are to use these theories and approaches that we constantly test and continue to test if these approaches still provide us wisdom or are falling by the wayside.. That being said, taking the time not to just read the current New York Times Top Ten Business Books list from this morning’s edition but to search back to see what helped shape the current CEO’s and leader’s thinking is important to the Safety consultant of today.

One such influential author and consultant is William B. Rouse. His book “Don’t Jump to Solutions: Thirteen Delusions That Undermine Strategic Thinking” I believe has enduring lessons to be learned in our striving to managed safety in our places of work and at home. Although not specifically a “safety management” book, I believe “Don’t Jump to Solutions” can and does fit to enhance our safety management efforts. Let’s take a look at the 13 points made in this classic text and how the teachings can be applied to safety management. I’ve taken some liberties with Rouse’s list to enhance how I believe his observations and advice can apply to safety management:

1. Visions need to be dynamic – not unyielding to the current realities

“Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds can not change anything.” – George Bernard Shaw

Vision and intention are important and so is taking the pathways that are determined with knowledge. Safety Polices and commitments are important to establish our vision and intention for how we are going to operate our companies. These need to be fluid and valid in our current operating environments. For example, using the same audit multiple years in a row…can be (who are we kidding… it IS) counterproductive. We need to raise the bar as we mature our safety culture.

2. Admit and understand your weaknesses. Stop lying to yourself

Driving performance and action plans through falsified data through re-classifying injury data is silly. Pretending we have better results than we do is misleading the very people who need to know the truth. Lying to yourself will come back to hurt you!

3. Learn to be humble and realistic. Don’t attribute all success to great management and blame all failures on bad luck.

Preventing injuries rather than creating safety culture is causing false positives and false confidence. Measure what you do to create safety rather than what didn’t happen in the way of injuries and costs gives a company a false sense of accomplishment. Not having an injury for a period of time can be the result of just luck.

4. Change is inevitable – Effective Change is an art.

Managing the change process is essential yet is so often poorly executed. Being overly optimistic as to the difficult steps a corporation needs to take to make a change in anything significant takes time and skill, planning and diligence.

5. Don’t become myopic. View your Safety Management System from various viewpoints. Passing the same audit annually is NOT striving for safety excellence. It’s striving for Safety mediocrity. As you move through the natural evolution of the Safety Management Continuum it will be necessary to change your viewpoint and process. The old adage “What got you here, won’t get you there” is very true in Safety Management. As you mature your culture, you need to let go of the past activities to success.

6. Avoid the one big win. “Zero injuries” for a period of time is a great result only when you truly understand why it occurred.

If you can’t explain what you are doing to get your results…you don’t know what you are doing. Achieving Zero Injuries by manipulating data and classifications is lying to yourself. Celebrating low injuries rates that could just be a matter of luck is foolish. Work diligently to understand how your safety creating activities are giving you the true results you are getting in safety management.

7. Forced agreement through forced consensus glosses over underlying conflicts.

Consensus based rules, regulations and international standards are often created through large groups of people reaching agreement which is often diluted down to meaningless and ineffective process. The very process of achieving consensus can force the end result into a diluted non-effective misunderstanding of what creates success.

8. Short term gains in hitting the numbers will negatively affect the long term success

Your current injury rate alone probably tells you nothing about what is working and what isn’t. It certainly tells you nothing about what could happen in the future. Managing activities that create safety and measuring those activities against the results achieve will become a tool to predict what will happen if a corporation continues to do the activities that prove successful.

9. Understanding the importance of relationships is extremely important to success.

Individual and group Needs, Wants, Aspirations and Fears need to be addressed for success.

Conflict management and Getting to Yes are two very misunderstood techniques in modern safety management. Why, I don’t know. Can we fix it…of course we can!

Safety Management is a people business and in some cases has be reduced to ineffective audits and inspections of paper and hardware. As Dan Petersen said…”Paper doesn’t save people…People save people.

10. Don’t get locked into process. Organizational change is necessary as your safety culture matures.

What got you here won’t get you there. Evolution of your safety culture is essential to improvement. Each stage of the Safety Management Continuum requires different levels of activity. Once you’ve fulfilled the engineering/procedural level…it does little good to stay there.

11. Focusing on the past is a mistake.

Drive the Safety Management System by looking forward. The past is seldom a predictor of the future unless you have detailed statistical evidence to support your beliefs in repeated history. Future plans and the activities to execute those plans are much more important than audits and incident rates. Measure what you do, not what happened to you, as an indicator of future success.

12. Manage change…once you’ve moved forward don’t allow the organization to fall back into old processes and behaviours.

True change is measured by forward movement. Unless the behaviours related to change are measured and supported through consequences, nothing truly happens.

13. Good plans can only place you on the road to serendipity. Even good plans are affected by the unplanned.

Whatever your plan is, whatever your change activities are, you’ll need to be flexible about taking detours that make sense along the way. Don’t lock into failure by not recognizing the potholes in the road to success that require a route change.

I highly recommend that you read “Don’t Jump to Solutions: Thirteen Delusions That Undermine Strategic Thinking” – William B. Rouse. There are insights to what we can all do to be much more effective.

Technorati Tags: conflict, Safety, safety culture, Safety Management, safety slogan, total loss control