Investigation of the Three Mile Island incident revealed some very interesting learnings, too.

It also doesn't help that so few executives truly understand risk or know where to start when writing policies and prefer to avoid having to think about it (especially when so many of their compliance people think and communicate in jargon-laden detail rather than high level concepts and principles) - thus the tendency to copy and paste.

Air Crash Investigation is also one of my favourites, not least because they have such great examples of thorough investigation that goes way beyond the superficial levels. I also used to enjoy Seconds From Disaster, which has a similar theme of understanding the contributing factors. I used to watch both on National Geographic channel when I had Sky TV, but I don't have it any more.

Like you @Rachel, I am always on the lookout for documentaries that detail the contributing factors, especially when they highlight all the 'human' elements of people's values, decision-making strategies, personal agendas, biases, assumptions, and all those less obvious psychological factors.

The very fact that so many of these policy statements are all so much alike speaks to the tendency of auditors to focus overly much on a rigid checklist of what is required to be mentioned.

It doesn't help when everyone just meekly accepts the requirement without questioning the purpose or usefulness, and nobody wants to take the risk of failing an audit. And one of the biggest root causes of the failure of the ACC WSMP accreditation system was the unconscious collusion of auditors and auditees to focus overly much on management systems documentation rather than what was happening in the real world.

And interesting article on a slightly tangential track relevant to H&S practitioners:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/world/asia/coronavirus-risk-interpreter.html?te=1&nl=the-interpreter&emc=edit_int_20200305&campaign_id=30&instance_id=16483&segment_id=21900&user_id=74ef65d3b47b7cebb1a8d109e49b2402&regi_id=4807023020200305

It's been interesting - the CEO asked me to prepare a travel advisory to tell people they didn't have to do any overseas travel if they did not feel safe, and that the company would pay for medical assessment / clearance when they return. But this is already so full of holes and unknowns! For one thing, there is no point in having a medical clearance to return to work straight away when the incubation period is 9-14 days.

Next, I keep being asked to prepare protocols and information for people on sites, especially where there is a reasonable amount of contact with the public. Since I don't have any particular training in pandemic prevention and related topics, I can only Google and provide information to the best of my ability. Since there are so many unknowns, most of the information is vague and very generic. The most reliable information is the advice to wash hands frequently, use alcohol-based hand sanitiser, practice good hygiene for coughing and sneezing, and stay home if you feel unwell.

I have read a number of articles online that say masks don't provide much protection for healthy people in non-healthcare situations. A mask may help to minimise the spread of germs if a person is sick and is coughing or sneezing, although to be very effective the mask needs to be fitted / worn correctly at all times, made of the right type of filter material, must be disposed of safely in a covered rubbish bin, washing hands after use. They also won't protect the wearer if they touch their mouth, nose or eyes while using the mask. So again, it's back to hand hygiene as your best defence.

We are ordering hand sanitiser, gloves and surface sanitiser wipes to send to all sites with some posters about hand washing and general guidelines for preventing infection from spreading.

I am really being hounded by all the detailed questions from various people who are looking for certainty when we really don't have very much certain to go on!

What would happen if you were using Waze or Google Maps to navigate? Waze already has a safety feature that doesn't let you type in the app when you are moving.

Having said that, I don't text while I am driving and I usually let calls go to voicemail, only answering if it's important / urgent and my phone is safely in the hands-free holder.

Thanks for the tip - I will check it out!

Your Dutch heritage could be a factor in your ability to be forthright and stand firm.....it's one of the qualities I cherish most in my Dutch partner! ;-)

There are many psychosocial factors that can subtly influence safety practitioner behaviours. Given that so many NZers tend to be conflict-averse, and that many organisations are less than deliberate when selecting the safety advisor - I have personally seen examples where an organisation appointed the 'problem' guy they don't know what else to do with, or the lowest price hiring option, or someone who would just do what the manager wants (i.e., a handy scapegoat).

One of the things that stood out to me from the whole Pike River saga was that people knew there were critical safety issues, and they had informed management, but everyone continued to operate. Neville Rockhouse was the H&S and Training Manager there, and I know he was on the verge of becoming president of INSHPO at the time of the fatal explosion, so he was a very experienced and well-established safety professional. Even so, he lost one son, nearly lost another son, and pretty much put an end to his safety career. Should he have done more to stop operations that fateful day? I'm sure he asks himself that question every day.

One of the things I have observed in many workplaces over many years is that most people are afraid of 'getting into trouble' and losing their jobs, because most have families, mortgage and other financial obligations. This pressure can sometimes be alleviated if the safety practitioner reports directly to the CEO and has strong organisational understanding and support, but NZ still has a long way to go on this, especially while CEOs and operational personnel are increasingly squeezed for profit and productivity.

Personally, I would walk away rather than be dragged into unethical behaviours or giving my blessing to unsafe practices. I have experienced a personal financial crisis where I had $24, no work and a single mother with a young child to look after. After working through my initial emotions and feelings of shame and failure, I eventually realised what a gift that experience was, because I KNOW that I can get through such a crisis, that there are resources and support out there, and that I never have to compromise myself and my own values. I have often said I would not want to have to do it again, but I am glad it happened - I now know how resourceful I am and what is possible, so no one will ever be able to force me into doing something that my conscience does not agree with. We always have to live with ourselves, so every decision should be something we can live with.

- Hi Alana - would you also share your shark analogy image with me?
sherisatxtradotcodotnz

Thank you!

I have shared the link for this discussion with my friend Joerg Schmidt-Hilger, who lives in Pinneberg, about 40km from Hamburg. Joerg's son Malte was barely 21 when a completely preventable workplace accident resulted in a fatal head injury.

I am hoping he will visit the forum and share his own perspectives - not only the profound effect on his home, family, and community, but also the ongoing frustrations Joerg and his wife Christina face in trying to hold the employer appropriately accountable for the poor safety management practices that led to the incident. The forklift driver whose actions led directly to the incident has been fined, but the bereaved parents recognise that it is actually the employer who was at fault for not providing safety management processes for a safe workplace. The company has refused to communicate with them and has been completely unsupportive of their needs, while the German government is unable to enforce any actions or even an appropriate investigation. After more than two years of campaigning, the German regulators have FINALLY agreed to conduct and investigation.

Determined that their loss should not be repeated in other families, Joerg and Christina have been actively reaching out to other parents whose children have died in workplace incidents, aiming to work together to put pressure on the German government to do more to protect workers as well as ensuring when a fatality occurs that the incident is thoroughly investigated so the family can understand what happened, and that employers treat families with appropriate dignity and respect.

Articles from the local news about dealing with their court experiences attached - unfortunately only in German. These only inform about the public, legal process, not the private pain and loss.

FYI - here is the article I wrote last year on what would have been Malte's 23rd birthday.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/remembering-malte-hilger-sheri-greenwell/

One more thought.....consider starting with a meaningful, well-formed higher level goal that an additional safety resource will allow you to achieve, and build the case from there so that the additional resource is part of the means to the goal rather than the aim. That approach might get more buy-in.

I don't have a template or example of a business case, but I do often use a few simple tools to organise information to support decision-making.

Cartesian Coordinates is a model I was taught for doing change work with individuals in my NLP Practitioner training, to test the impact of change. I especially use it when coaching people who need to make a decision and they are struggling to see what the impact will be. I just call it The Decision Tool. It's very effective because it looks at an issue from every angle and it facilitates a focused brainstorming (great with groups). See attached for a template.

SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Strengths) can sometimes provide useful supporting information, too.

There are numerous articles out there about ROI for safety, which is relevant for making a decision to add resources. ROI Institute has some free resources, including some case studies and a book (albeit a bit expensive!) on ROI for safety. https://roiinstitute.net/case-studies/

Complete Learning (Beryl Oldham) offers some examples of case studies: https://www.completelearning.co.nz/case-studies/

In the past, I had the reverse situation, where a manager wanted to shed one person from the Quality testing lab. The technicians initially freaked out, but I told them we would just record everything we did for a month and total it all up. Then I gave it to the manager and explained that this was what we were doing with the resources we had, informing him that if he took away one of my technicians, he would need to decide which of those functions would no longer be carried out. His idea was very quickly dropped!

In your case, you might need to do a little work to identify the opportunity costs and the risks of what is NOT being done because you don't have enough resource to do it, and set out details of the activities the person would be responsible for carrying out.

In my experience, managers are on their own track with business activities; unless we go to them with sufficient thinking, preparation and data-gathering so we get their attention and they can clearly see everything, they are more likely to decline the request rather than delve more deeply into it. Try to anticipate from their perspective what it will take to make the idea crystal clear, compelling and undeniable.

Good luck with your mission!

Well said!

Shouldn't we be advocating a system to reliably and meaningfully identify level of impairment, which is the key issue behind drug testing anyway??

We circulated to all employees a simple poster for minimising the risks of spreading any virus.

We also circulated to managers a document with information collated from various news sources so managers could provide answers if anyone came to them with questions.

It's very important that we avoid creating panic while still encouraging people to take appropriate precautions.

Blaming tourists for crashes is often making them a convenient to avoid having to look at ourselves.

The South Island has its own challenges in having to navigate over long, often winding stretches of roads where drivers might not see another car for quite some distance, leading to complacency and inattention. When I lived in Methven (Mid-Canterbury) many years ago, I can recall one summer day when there was a crash at an uncontrolled intersection in the residential section of the sleepy little town (at least it's quiet when it isn't ski season!), and when they investigated, they found that both drivers simply 'didn't expect any other cars to be there'. Neither had even checked before entering the intersection, so both were profoundly surprised to find themselves colliding with another vehicle.

I also met many drivers in the South Island who had learned by driving farm vehicles, with very little (typically none at all!) instruction or supervision. So they often had very little idea of defensive driving or road safety principles.

At the same time, many roads throughout NZ - I see them all the time here in Auckland - have not been designed with safety in mind. Many roads are designed in ways that actually encourage poor driving habits and unsafe behaviours. Timed transit lanes might aim to keep traffic flowing in peak times, but they have to be policed for this to be effective. In addition, the way these lanes are allocated only during peak times means parked cars are allowed to park in a lane of a busy road, where vehicles may be driving along in that lane only to suddenly find themselves approaching a parked vehicle in front of them and having to suddenly take evasive action - this often happens along Gillies Avenue in Epsom, for example - there is a slight rise where you can't see very far ahead, and it is quite reasonable to expect to be able to just proceed in that lane. I can think of several other busy roads that operate with the same set of conditions, and I am surprised there are not more accidents.

Another source of confusion and increased risk is the inclination to add additional lanes as you approach an intersection, then at the other side the extra lanes very quickly disappear, leaving vehicles to merge. At busy intersections, this just leads to competitive driving to get ahead of as many other vehicles as possible, with long, slow queues building along with a head of steam with frustrated drivers.

I have been told in the past that changes are only undertaken by NZTA after a certain number of fatalities or factors such as a dramatic increase in traffic volumes, due to the costs of making changes, so NZTA could also do a lot more to get on board - stop making decisions with financial outlay as the only consideration or the most important factor, and start thinking a little further ahead. Safer road design is really the best solution.

This thread epitomizes a key point that challenges every organisation, whether from the HR perspective or the H&S perspective - human nature and the myriad factors that influence human behaviour. What might be perfectly acceptable within one group of people might not fit so easily in another context. Some people are flexible and adaptable, while others think the world should march to their own tune. The vast extent of variability is probably the biggest reason HR and Safety have largely tiptoed around human behaviour for so long and focused much more on concrete and more defined elements such as management systems, equipment and machinery, buildings, etc. Even trying to adopt a strictly politically correct culture will ultimately fail to deliver all things to all people at all times, and it also does nothing to teach resilience and self-determination.