- you raise a very important point. At what point will people / businesses have the intestinal fortitude to draw a line and define for themselves what is reasonable? In safety management, as with quality management, there is a definite point of diminishing returns, where the quest for perfection becomes exponentially more expensive with only tiny incremental improvements.

In many cases, all that is needed is a little thinking through of the incident and asking what is reasonable. I once stumbled leaving the office, brushing the bottom of my foot on the slightly raised door frame, which led to me losing my balance and twisting my ankle when my foot landed on slightly uneven pavement. The safety person wanted to immediately order changes to all door frames, but really, the cause was that I was a bit tired at the end of the work day and didn't lift my foot properly. Once this happened, I was much more mindful when exiting the office building.

I have recently attempted to review and update a client hazard / risk register that not only confused different logical levels in identifying hazards and risks, but also included many very far-fetched potential consequences that really muddied the water. For example, they had listed manual handling as a risk, but then manual handling and potential consequences were carried through to numerous other hazards / risks. A range of risks was lumped together under a hazard topic, then all the controls were similarly lumped together under the heading of controls - the direct link between hazard - risk - control should be there for this to make sense and be of use to workers. This kind of complexity and confusion doesn't help the cause.

In the past, a colleague told me of being ordered by her general manager to take work documents to an employee who was hospitalised after an incident, reasoning that if the person was actually doing work activities, they would not have to count him as an LTI....and more importantly, they would not lose their bonus for no LTIs!

Industry's addiction to pieces of paper and signatures is the symptom of underlying lack of trust and pervasive fear of legal penalties. Threats of bigger fines and jail sentences are actually only feeding this, while industry groans under the ever-increasing weight of all the additional paper (and the environment isn't doing very well out of it either!).

It seems everyone is looking for CERTAINTY in the face of the very principles of risk. Pieces of paper and signatures are a part of an anachronistic approach inherited from the old days of soldiers on a battlefield; it doesn't really fit with today's digital world, but the majority seem disinclined to experiment with the prospect of fines, jail sentences and ruined reputations if they don't get it perfect from the very start - there is no room for experimenting and learning, which keeps industry bound in this endless bureaucratic circle.

What about trying voice recognition software to reduce the need to type?

- the majority of H&S policies and procedures imposed on workers / contractors are imposed because someone in a position of authority and responsibility believes it will cover their backside for legal liability.

It's particularly frustrating when people in the organisation imposing the requirements imposes them unilaterally, without consultation (or to give the appearance of asking for input) or opportunities to discuss and debate before implementing procedures and forms.

If managers would just drop their ego-driven pride and sit down with contractors / workers and invite them to contribute ideas and suggestions, ask questions, and overall ensure those most affected have the opportunity to participate in meaningful ways (this means doing more than just sending the superficial and largely cosmetic afterthought communicating what has already been decided by them and asking for any feedback or comments that will ultimately be ignored rather than risk losing face and having to back down!).

Genuine participation in the process of developing processes and procedures not only facilitates more effective processes; it also engenders greater buy-in to comply with them.

Given the dearth of available tools, a useful starting point may well be the wellbeing self-assessment used by Dr Keith Hammond as part of his Industry:Fit programmes. It will at least allow you to develop a 'heat map' of where people are at, then you can periodically survey people again.

I also think there is enormous potential to develop diagnostics from the AVI Values Inventory Leadership Development report, which uses an elegantly simple questionnaire to provide a wealth of information that a trained consultant can use to identify issues such as stress. In addition, the consultant can consolidate individual AVI results to provide insights into groups / teams and the entire organisation. I don't know if anyone has yet identified this potential for the AVI Values Inventory, but you can find out more from www.minessence.net

It doesn't help that most safety and compliance training typically consists mainly of telling the audience WHAT the law says, without conveying the WHY behind it. Even many so-called safety professionals struggle to explain why or the purpose / intent behind requirements - just keep perpetuating it 'because the law says we have to".

I'm reminded of the story where a man asked his wife why she cut off both ends of the roast before placing it in the roasting pan. His wife shrugged her shoulders and explained that was what her mother had always done. So the man asked his mother-in-law, who also shrugged and could only offer that it was what her mother had always done. So the man went to his wife's grandmother who explained that when she first got married, the only roasting pan they had was too short, so she cut the ends off to make the roast fit!

Having come from a background of working with quality management systems at the time when ISO9001 was just starting to be implemented, I found - then as well as now - that many people simply don't understand and are not in the habit of asking further questions to understand the principles behind the rules (and often regulators enact 'knee-jerk' regulatory requirements that similarly lack the rigour of deeper consideration in their haste to be seen to be taking action). When people lack understanding and seek the relative comfort of certainty, they will often look for an organisation or practitioner who seems to know what they are doing and just copy their systems and processes entirely or nearly entirely by rote - this is how organisations acquire systems and processes that are not fit for purpose, and often that don't really contribute to safer workplaces. Given these contributing factors, we shouldn't be surprised that most managers and workers consider most health and safety systems to be bureaucratic paperwork.

One last comment on this: in effective safety management systems, the paperwork is only the documentation that captures the processes used for risk assessment and implementation of controls; the paperwork is never "the process" itself.

Businesses are only 'strangled' by health and safety requirements when they don't understand them well enough to develop appropriate and effective safety management systems and processes. It all comes down to getting clarity about the purpose and intent and continually refining the processes - always asking if there is a better (more effective / efficient) way to achieve the desired objectives.

In addition, it helps a lot when businesses recognise that safe workplaces are actually a reasonably predictable outcome for organisations that operate according to complementary skills and tools of effective leadership practices and functional management. This includes clarity of purpose, shared values, meaningful consultation and communication, vision and foresight, planning, integrated processes, supervision and monitoring, measurement and reporting, and those responsible at the top keeping track of organisational performance proactively enough to provide responsive guidance and action when things start to veer off track.

Stress is actually a personal response and byproduct to external pressures. Individuals tolerate / respond to pressure differently, with a number of contributing factors, and not all stress comes from work-related issues.

I just saw someone using one of these to zip along a footpath at Auckland City Hospital this morning. It's challenging enough to manage vehicles through the complex site and keep pedestrians out of the way of vehicles, but the person on the scooter would have sent any pedestrian flying if they ran into someone!

Interesting reading from this link provided by Glenn Taylor:
http://angelpages.biz/4theturbanator

"Sikh soldiers refused to wear helmets during World War I and World War II. They fought instead with turbans on their heads. A Sikh (Khalsa) is supposed to be fearless. Wearing a helmet is admitting fear of death. Many Sikhs received the Victoria Cross, often postumusly awarded, which is the most prestigeous gallantry award of the British army.


Many Sikhs refused to remove their turban even in jails. Bhai Randhir Singh, a widely respected Sikh preacher, scholar and a freedom fighter had to undergo a fast to win his right to wear his turban while in prison."

This suggests there are a number of deeply held cultural beliefs that need to be taken into account with this issue.

I have personally visited a Sikh temple, where all men and women are required to have their heads covered when they enter the temple. There are kerchief type of head coverings for men who do't wear turbans. Wouldn't that be an option worth exploring for areas where head protection is required? A kerchief could be worn to cover the hair as per the Sikh requirement, and most hard hats would readily fit over them.

I agree that the best way to resolve the issue would be to engage with leaders of the Sikh community and discuss how best to provide workplace protection from harm without compromising their articles of faith.

I agree with you Simon that an orderly, tidy workplace ` is evidence of good leadership, of which too many organisations are sadly lacking.

In addition, safety and safety culture are actually NOT the aims; they are a result of the 'alchemy' bringing together the appropriate balance of the complementary and distinctly different skills sets of management and leadership.

Leadership
About people
Setting vision & direction
Strategic
Long-term focus
Big picture
Why & Where
Values
Inspiration
Drawing toward
Flexibility / adaptiveness
Dream
Direction
Engaging & motivating

Management
About processes, tasks & outcomes
Making it happen
Operational
Shorter-term focus
Small picture / details
What and How
Rules
Perspiration
Pushing
Firmness / rigidity
Results
Action
Providing structure

Successful organisations and cultures have the right balance of both and will as a a result achieve safety, quality, productivity, employee engagement, low employee turnover, and profitability.

Safety is NOT the aim; it is a key outcome of an organisation's culture, along with a number of other important organisational objectives.

Talk to Dr Keith Hammond (Industry:Fit) for some useful ideas and approached. He designed and led an injury prevention and wellbeing programme for companies like Electrix (Supreme Safety Award winner 2011) and Ports of Auckland, where I was the company's champion for implementation. The idea started as an injury prevention programme and quickly extended into healthy eating (supported by access to nutritional supplements at reduced prices and led to a review of the site cafe service providers and menu). The programme was warmly embraced across most of the business, with scheduled exercise sessions 3x per day, which led to people from different parts of the business getting to know each other while sweating it out in the training room - this broke down barriers as well as healing some of the 'wounds' of the big 2011 strike. As more and more people became interested, we had casual shared breakfasts, and special programmes were introduced to appeal to a wider range of people and integrating more diet and weight loss strategies.

Dr Hammond designed a suitable 12-week foundation fitness programme, accompanied by a set of metrics to measure effectiveness. He recorded pre- and post-programme body measurements, body photos (with minimal clothing but enough to see changes in physiological definition), fitness test results and a wellbeing questionnaire. In this way, individuals and company managers had concrete evidence of results, and we also had the opportunity to recognise individuals for specific elements of achievement - this was especially important when we had such diverse levels of foundation fitness at the start. When we finished the first intake of the 12-week fitness programme, we held a special function for participants to receive their personal results and for Dr Hammond and his team to recognise achievements among the group.

I have long since changed employment, so I don't have up-to-date knowledge other than that the PortFit programme was so successful on so many levels that the CEO got in behind it and ensured the continuation of the original and subsequent programmes. The fitness programme was also intended to further develop useful methods and tools such as assessment of fitness for work (pre-employment and return-to-work), as well as opportunities to provide rehabilitation facilities on site - the CEO was so impressed with the PortFit programme that he authorised development of unused office space into a proper gym facility with rubber flooring, weights and other equipment, whiteboard painted walls, and various equipment suitable for supervised training sessions (i.e., access to the room is limited to scheduled daily sessions run by a qualified trainer appointed by Dr Hammond, following a specified routine for the day, with options to modify the set routine for individuals if they require consideration for an injury, etc). The whiteboard-painted walls provided a space for people to write their 'personal bests' where everyone could see it - a bit of recognition for their achievements, and just competing with their own previous achievements.

I hope that is helpful. I would be happy to answer any questions or direct you to others for further assistance.

In addition to considering entrenched habits and mindsets of workers, it is vital to examine the entrenched habits and mindsets of managers.

As people take on management roles, they typically adopt a 'management' perspective that includes an array of largely unconscious assumptions and biases about the people who report to them, as well as how the manager 'should' behave in relation to those workers and vice versa.

I used to deliver workshops for Tai Poutini Polytechnic's Certificate in Applied Leadership programme, and in the Leadership module, we explored a number of fascinating topics that are useful and relevant across virtually all disciplines. One topic explored the distinctions between "Management" vs "Leadership" - two complementary and distinctly different sets of skills and traits, but because the English language does not have an all-encompassing term for both, people often talk about 'leadership' when in fact they are dealing with 'management'. Management is far more concrete and usually focused on tasks and outcomes; leadership is much more abstract and focuses on inspiration, direction, motivation and other people-centric qualities. I have a document that shows these complementary skills and traits and will be happy to share if others are interested.

Another interesting segment of this workshop was demonstrating the unconscious bias of managers in their perception of workers' priorities. A famous study gave workers a list of 10 issues and asked workers to list them in order of importance. They gave the same list to managers and asked them to list them in the order they thought workers would prioritise them. The results were so different that they thought they might have made a mistake, so they repeated it. Again, very different results, so they repeated a third time. Then they decided to ask managers how they themselves would prioritise them, and it came out matching what workers wanted. It was an interesting discussion, because managers unconsciously adopted an expectation that workers would prioritise pay as the number one concern, when in fact pay came out as number 5 in the list for both groups. The top three priorities for BOTH groups included having a say in issues about their work that affected them, being supported with personal issues and concerns (e.g., flexibility around work arrangements when they had a sick child or needed to attend a medical appointment), and being given a sincere thank you for work well done.

In the workshop discussion on employee performance, we explored various options for recognition and rewards. The simplest, least expensive and most effective option for recognition and rewards is personal recognition of the individual for work they have contributed from their manager or supervisor. That can be a simple as a sincere face-to-face THANK YOU or a personal card from the manager! The least effective and most costly approach is giving a prize or bonus for team performance - yet somehow this is more commonly what managers do!

So back to the original topic. The most effective approach is to wake up to those hidden assumptions, re-visit the purpose and intent of safety policies, and ensure every policy and every procedure is designed to safely deliver work objectives, not simply bending others to the will of managers who feel they have a right to dictate how people will work in their workplace. Effective leaders have the good sense to remain receptive to workers' perspectives. Good leaders know there is power in asking questions (the one who asks the questions actually controls the discussion, NOT the person who is answering!) and nothing to fear from listening to the answers, because they are clear about their own authority to decide and recognise the wisdom of making informed and inclusive decisions.

HSWA and its regulatory predecessors mandated that contractor safety must be addressed the same as for a PCBU's own workers. What provisions are there for when a PCBU bullies and harasses another PCBU (and its workers) it has contracted to carry out specified work for it?