Australasian Safety Consulting Services Pty Ltd

24/02/2016

Last week I attended a focus group held by the Office of Industrial Relations (WorkCover Qld) for the new Qld work capacity certificate which is being developed.

The new certificate will focus on what work can be done after injury, supporting early and safe rehabilitation and return to work, and encouraging return-to-work discussions as early as possible.

Once all of the feedback from the stakeholder focus groups have been taken into compiled, the new certificate is expected to start being trialled in July, with full implementation by January 2017.

16/02/2016

A Simple but effective piece of equipment to rescue personnel from a hazardous environment .

16/02/2016

The need to cut costs can overshadow a business's safety commitment.

In my day to day consulting work, it's painfully obvious that as 2016 gets underway an increasing number of businesses are experiencing economic pressures. As these companies and organisations look to structure themselves and shave off every cent that isn't considered absolutely necessary, many have inevitably fallen to the problematic notion that safety is an impost and is an area in which to implement cuts.

PCBUs (person conducting a business or undertaking) who are anxious to reduce costs, at times lose sight that safety can also heavily impact on efficiency, as a serious incident can have a highly detrimental effect as any savings made from cuts to hazard and risk resources can be dashed in one incident.

When there are financial pressures on any organisation, duty holders should remember to remain strong on their safety messaging, this reminds employees that senior leader’s care about the safety aspect of work and are continuing to focus on the wellbeing of their staff – not just the dollars.

One of the most common challenges I see is that safety practitioners are viewed as being a safety guard dog, however with cost cutting implementations, they are relegated to a compliance role and are effectively muzzled from actively developing practical and effective applications that improve safety and prevent harm.

Safety professionals can better assist their cause through having an understanding of the business’s economic strategy and then by ensuring that they focus on also demonstrating the cost effectiveness when presenting safety solutions rather just on the practicable and realistic aspects of how they eliminate/reduce harm.

There are a number positive indicators that your business' or organisation’s safety culture and safety outcomes are not being outweighed by financial considerations.
These include;
• Safety practitioners/specialists are engaged in health and safety routinely not only after an incident has occurred.
• Management and supervisors respond positively to safety issues that are raised.
• Subcontractor’s tender process/procedures are not compromised. Tenders are awarded based safety and quality performance not who was the cheapest.
•‘ Corrective Actions’ are closed out and are not overdue because of budget restraints.
• Senior executive team and board seek to understand the safety impacts of every decision being made across the business.
• Safety is not treated as something separate to be discussed during a weekly safety meeting or only at shift change. Safety is part every conversation and considered in every decision.
• The business has the maturity and willpower to implement changes when necessary

09/02/2016

Seven steps to implement continual improvement of injury management in your workplace.

Over the next 12 months…
• 640,700 workers, or 5.3% of the Australian workforce will experience a work-related incident
• Of these, approximately 131,000 will result in lost time of more than 5 days
• In Queensland over 14,000 workers will be injured

Queensland’s average return to work rate after a workplace injury is impressive at over 90 per cent, according to WorkCover Qld although businesses could achieved further improvements with their rates by a few simple steps;

1. Plan
Develop a strategic injury management objective and plan then communicate it at all levels of the business.

2. Raise awareness at management level
Ensure all levels of management understand the importance of early return to work/stay at work outcomes and the benefits of this for both the injured worker and the business. Provide frontline managers with rehabilitation training and send injury notifications to all managers so that they are up-to-date on injuries happening in their areas.

3. Ask for feedback
Incorporate a survey form with your OHS, rehabilitation and return to work documents to obtain feedback from injured employees after their claim closes.

4. Foster an early intervention culture
Foster and build a strong culture of early intervention, including injury reporting and management. It helps to clarify procedures for early incident reporting and ensure that injury managers are first responding to an injured worker either by phone or in person.

5. Communicate
Communication is crucial in effective injury management. Keep all relevant parties involved and part of the process. Ineffective and inconsistent communication can lead to a break in trust with the worker that always results in a longer than expected recovery time frame.

6. Think outside the box
Look outside the box for different ways to deliver and access injury management and OHS training. Training is sometimes difficult to organise, due to time, budget and geographical constraints with managers often working in different regions. If this applies to your business, look at alternatives for training delivery methods, e.g. online/teleconference meetings. This may assist with capturing a wider audience.

7. Find and support OHS and injury management champions within your business
Having a cohesive OHS and injury management team that are all on the same page and striving to meet the same goals makes it easier to gain organisational trust in what you are trying to achieve. Find ways to spread the word about the value and benefits of OHS and effective injury management across the business, and share safety resources and procedures.

04/02/2016

Fallacy - Adopted a high standard of risk control and introduce more administration controls to prevent workplace harm.

Some organisations implement standards of risk control that are more stringent than good practice, including relying predominantly on administration controls in the belief that by doing so they fulfilling their duty to eliminate or minimise health and safety risks so far as is reasonably practicable. They may do this for a number of reasons, such as meeting corporate social responsibility goals, the belief that more rules and paperwork will protect them from liability, must be seen seeking a continual improvement in standards, or because of a lack of knowledge by senior managers of health and safety principles, and critical safety behaviours. It does not follow that all risk control standards are reasonably practicable or can stop an unsafe act or behaviour.

Risk reduction does not mean that every measure that could possibly be taken (however theoretical) to reduce risk must be taken, nor is deciding that the introduction of another control is a continual improvement in standards. When we make decisions about hazards, risks and most importantly, risk controls, we need to avoid dysfunctional decision-making. Direct pressure, over reactionary, high stress, persuasive leaders, and shared stereotypes without focusing on the human behavioural aspect can lead to a failure to ensure that the controls are reasonably practicable.

In most instances, there is more than one needed to control a risk this generally include a combination from the hierarchy of controls. These controls are barriers that prevent the risk being realised however duty holders need to avoid the temptation to require more and more administration controls i.e. procedures, signage or checklists…etc. - as part of these protective barriers, in the belief that by introducing them, will reduce the risk as low as possible (ALARP) thus a harmful event will be prevented. For example: company ‘A’ has had a number workers sustain serious back injuries when lifting storage boxes onto to shelves. Rather than just rely on putting up signage or a introduce manual handling procedure they remove all large storage boxes and replace them with smaller ones so that they cannot be over filled and redesign their storage shelving so workers do not need to lift above waist height.

To continuously improve safety performance, we need to focus on the human behavioural aspects rather than controls that may tick the compliance box but do not influence or stop unsafe behaviours. Safety professionals and duty holders need to consider the internal and external factors that combine to influence our perception and decision-making when undertaking tasks and this should include consideration of workplace morale and motivation before they adopted a higher standard of risk control or introduce more administration controls.

03/02/2016

ALARP "Practicable application" for safety professionals and duty holders.

The application of health and safety does not have to be complicated, costly or time-consuming and although many safety professionals know about “as low as reasonably practicable” (ALARP) they sometimes struggle to clearly advise duty holders about whether those control measures reduce risks ALARP without the cost being grossly disproportionate in the benefits of achieving risk reduction.

For safety professionals, the application of “reasonably practicable” allows us to advise duty-holders, rather than being unbending while for the duty holder it allows them to choose the method that is best for them and so it supports innovation, however it has its drawbacks, too. Deciding whether a risk is ALARP can be challenging because it requires duty-holders to exercise judgment between achieving compliance and ‘best practice’. In the great majority of instances, duty holders can rely on established ‘best practice’ that has been implement within industry. For high hazards, complex or novel situations, duty holders should use a more formal decision making process, including consultation and cost-benefit analysis, to assist in their judgement.

Of course, in reality many decisions about risk and the controls that achieve ALARP are not so obvious. Factors come into play such as ongoing costs set against remote chances of one-off events, or daily expense and supervision time required to ensure that, for example, employees wear ear protection against a chance of developing hearing loss at some time in the future. It requires judgment. There is no simple formula for computing what is ALARP

Once what is ‘best practice’ has been determined, much of the discussion with duty-holders about if a risk is or will be ALARP is likely to be affected with the application of the ‘best practice’, and how appropriately it has been (or will be) implemented - Where there is established, appropriate and recognised ‘best practice’, duty-holders need to follow it. If they want to do something different, they must be able to demonstrate that the measures they propose to use are at least as effective in controlling the risk.

Our decision about what is ALARP is constant evolving process, which is affected by changes in knowledge about the size or nature of the risk presented by a hazard. If there is sound evidence to show that a hazard presents significantly greater risks than previously thought, then of course we should press for stronger controls to tackle the new situation. However, if the evidence shows the hazard presents significantly lesser risks than previously thought, then we should accept a relaxation in control provided the new arrangements ensure the risks are ALARP.

As safety professionals we need recognise that ALARP does not represent zero risk. We have to expect the risk arising from a hazard to be occur at some time, and as a consequence that harm may result, even though the risk is ALARP. This is an uncomfortable thought for many safety professionals, however it is inevitable. Of course we should always strive to make sure that duty-holders reduce and maintain the risks ALARP, and we should never be complacent, nevertheless, the reality is that we need to accept that risk from an activity can never be entirely eliminated unless the activity is stopped.

29/01/2016

Apple product recall - Wall charger

Apple has initiated an international recall of its power adaptors for a Macs, iPads and iPhones due to a risk of electric shocks.

26/01/2016

25/01/2016

Event (Incident) Investigation Trap

Even the most experienced investigators are often trapped by the same cause & effect assumption that traps amateurs. How? First, even the many experienced investigators don’t know all the cause & effect relationships that cause incidents. This is especially true of the causes of human error. Many “experts” have little or no training or understanding of the psychology behind human error and focus on correcting a worker's unsafe act/s as the singular causal factor for the incident rather than addressing the multiple conditions that contributed to most incidents.

Although many organisations have Incident procedures that require a lead investigator and a team of investigators (the size of the team being dependant on the nature of the incident or other conditions) with the hope that someone on the team will see the right answer. Of course, this depends on team selection to counter the inherent weakness of the assumption behind incident causation. Also, it assumes that the rest of the team will recognise the right finding when another team member presents it. Good luck! Often, the “more dominant” member of the team will lead the team to arrive at the findings that he/she is experienced with.

All members of the investigation team must able to understand that how they search for and interrupt the findings of causal and contributing factors with respect to incident causation to ensure that they are not accidentally influenced in their determination and recommendations.

Organisation can better ensure the success of their investigation teams by:
1. Ensuring adequate training on hazard, risks and investigation techniques are provided to those persons identified to make up an investigation team.
2. Ensure teams are comprised with someone who has appropriate technically knowledge around the work activity and procedures.
3. Ensure that investigation team members are unbiased - (immediate supervises and workers may not thoroughly examine their contributing factors.)
4. Adequate resource the team.

19/01/2016

Seven industry sectors have been identified as requiring targeted efforts to improve safety in order to keep Queensland’s work injury rates trending down.

Recent statistics show that the serious injury claim rate for the targeted sub-sectors, including the metals manufacturing, meat processing, road freight, civil construction, construction trades, horticulture and livestock sectors were much higher than each overall industry claim rate.

Workplace Health and Safety Queensland will work closely with businesses in these sectors to identify the most prevalent injuries and what is causing them and ensure that integrated action plans are implemented that intergrade health and safety, injury management and health and wellbeing systems .

11/01/2016

Today the Safety Institute of Australia announced that the Safety Institute of Australia and the Australian OHS Education Accreditation Board, together with the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE) Safety Centre, will conduct a joint project to develop a chapter on process safety for the OHS Body of Knowledge for Generalist OHS Professionals.
Trish Kerin, director of the IChemE Safety Centre said that the collaboration is “an opportunity to improve the approach to Process Safety generally”, as the content of the chapter will be built around the process safety competences for generalist OHS professions - developed as part of larger process safety competency framework.
The scope and content of the chapter will be produced by a technical panel, comprising process safety engineers and generalist OHS professionals.
Pam Pryor, Registrar of the Australian OHS Education Accreditation Board, custodian of the OHS Body of Knowledge, said that this development is exciting as it “recognises the role of the Generalist in supporting process safety and will provide a conceptual knowledge base for the generalist, including effective liaison with engineers.”
CEO of the Safety Institute of Australia Mr David Clarke welcomed the joint work on the new chapter. “Some generalist OHS professionals have an engineering background. However, analysis of recent process engineering disasters has shown that all generalists operating in high-risk environments should have this foundation knowledge. The ability to identify issues, contribute a unique perspective, and engage with process safety specialists is essential to for managing safety in such environments” he said.
Work will commence in February, with a workshop for the technical panel. The publication is planned for late 2016.

18/12/2015

After the Christmas shut down, workers returning to the construction site should be re-inducted so they can be re-familiarise with the worksite.

This does not have to be a long process and there are a number of ways that this can be achieved, from a an address by the Project Director/Manager to all workers, through to individual contractors conducting their own for their workers.

Some of the topics that should be covered are:

1. Keep it simple. Explain that everyone must ensure work is done as safely as possible and that each worker should not put themselves or others at risk. Inspect the work area and only commence work after ensuring the job steps are know and the appropriate controls are in place.

2. Have workers review, amend and sign onto Safe Work Procedures, Safe Work Method Statements, Job Hazard Analysis...etc. before commencing work.

3. Reaffirm the provisions of first aid and emergency procedures and reintroduce key safety personnel.

4. Have the locations facilities and amenities been moved, if so, workers need to be advised.

5. Re-cover the potential site evacuation scenarios, what the alarm sounds like, how to activate it, exit routes and roll call locations. Workers should know how to use fire fighting equipment but only to tackle small fires.

6. Remind workers about the importance of good housekeeping practices and where location of bins.

7. Ensure that those workers whose tickets/licences may have expired over the break have renewed them - if expired then they do not commence work

8. Other topics include safety signage, turning up for work in a fit state and the site drug and alcohol policy, as well as proper use and care of personal protective equipment.

Remember that some workers may require more specific training before commencing a particular task or role safely.