The
arguments come from many sectors and from individuals as if they have the
answer; the next silver bullet so to speak. Workers fight with OHS officers,
OHS officers fight with management, management fight with engineering,
psychologists fight with both, both fight with engineers, non experts fight
with experts, and experts fight with everyone else...and to make matters worse,
some even fight with themselves trying to make sense of it all...mmm, my head
hurts! I am sure the cave-peoples of the day were arguing about the risks of
hunting mammoth, such as if using a 50m safety radius should be used or if a 5
meter spear is better than a 2 meter one.
In
relation to all these subjective experts, it is almost like we are trying to
say that the hand is less important than the hearing system, and that the eyes
are more important than feet. While this is very much open to debate, and one
could arrive at a logical answer as to what is more important, but one fact
remains regardless of any evaluation process; the whole collective body in its complete
functioning form should not be segregated, for if it is, it becomes an
incomplete unit with deficiencies.
We
seem to be a continuous cycle of over-complication, a continual expanding
process of individuality that constantly prescribes a better and a more
advanced way to that last simple system/ideology. While I myself am person who
desires change, loves to innovate and who is very much a critical thinker, I
fully understand and grasp the context of simplicity first as the golden rule.
The
problems I have seen in my working life as a safety person so far are
people/managers/leaders overcomplicating the “simple”. This overcomplicating
often occurring before simple is mastered. My argument here now could also fall
into this process of over-complication, as I am trying to advertise the point
that returning to simple could be a form of complexity. What do I mean;
returning back to simple is often complicated as people in general have a hard
time working with simplistic as the think overcomplicated or more intelligent
is better.
Now
while it appears that I am critical of all this noise, on the contrary, I think
all this debating and divergent thinking is good, as being a critical thinker
helps raise issues (the thing we are supposed to be doing in safety and life in
general) and find causalities of failure. One has to keep in mind though the
line of practicality. The problem I am saying is that all this noise does not
seem to be solving or improving OHS issues (or at least not fast enough anyway
considering our speed of collective progress) and we continue to act like
cave-people arguing over what is the correct safety distance for hunting and
what tool is best to use. So in the end, it all just remains as noise, noise
that is getting louder and louder and louder, so much so we need hearing
protection.
Let’s
ask a common question; what would happen if an alien race threatened to take
over our world? The world would become as one and all our differences would be
negated for a central goal (at least for a short time anyway until one
befriended the alien race for gains); this goal being for the good of humankind
and protection of our planet.
So
I ask this; In OHS, why do we continue to squabble, belittle, compete, and
blame others when our collective goal seems to be that of the same; that to
protect our fellow humans against risk? Do these people want to understand safety? that being a collective effort.
I
personally think that we do need to include human influences and judgments
(psychology) in our risk management philosophy just as much as all things that
make for something (eggs are needed to make a cake), but it has to be treated as a part of the whole system. If someone falls off a platform at a railway station and
onto a railway track, the risk assessment (the reactive after event version)
should include such aspects as psychology, just as it should have included it
in the original engineering of the platform. Who is best to do this, not safety
people, not engineers, not accountants, but psychologists; people with the best
understanding of human decision making. I would not go and talk to an engineer
to get their opinion about decision making or human thinking just as much as I
would not talk to a psychologist about gear ratio design for best power
delivery in a sports car.
This is why
I always say there is no need for safety people in the workforce in todays context (being everthing but a safety person). Safety comes
from many factors; it can only be the holistic gathering of all these factors
that make for a provision to apply safety.
Say
if I wanted to design a ladder for example, I would gain advice from many
industry experts, then I would set my criterion for the design to match the
best advice I have available at the time i.e. the ladder needs to be strong
enough to hold a 180kg person, but light enough that people’s choice to use the
ladder will not be hampered by the human decision making process (that of the
lazy human mindset) i.e. this ladder is heavy, I will not move the ladder,
therefore I will stand on the windowsill. So the engineer will have to design a
ladder that is easy to move, light and strong. One could even argue the use of
biomechanics in the design, but that’s risk management.
As
with everything in our lives, OHS is a balancing act with weight being added
from many sectors (what I have called; the weighing of the factual). I suppose
the problem with risk management is that it does not really explain in overcomplicated detail
all the factors that would be really needed to make way for the best
practicable outcome (for obvious reasons). The guiding material basically says get all
information (this should be fairly simple). The complexity of all things would warrant such overcomplicated detail as; too
much information/to complex/to time consuming and hence to costly. So it’s therefore
left up to the ones (usually safety people) doing the risk assessment to
include as much detail that permits or for what they feel is needed to make the
task reasonability practicable to do, and or any other constraint that limits
practicable management (time, cost, effort etc).
What
if there was a legal requirement that told us to include factors such as
psychological and humanizing approaches on top the common hierarchy of
controls. Let’s just say that the hierarchy of controls listed one of the top
controls as Psychological Factors. Would this give the end result a tick of a
practicably reasonable pass? Obviously you would think it would as it is us who
makes mistakes. The problem though is that psychologists conveniently do not
tell you, is that even they cannot predict what people may or may not do in any
given scenario, so how would you determine practicability. I have seen
physiologists tell the safety world that we should forget everything we know
about rules and systems and go with their ideology. This is the “everything is
a nail” syndrome.
In
safety risk management, we see many step processes, linear systems, flowcharts
that depict what we need to do to achieve a goal or desired outcome. We live in
a world full of manmade order (humanisation) with little consideration for chaotic randomness.
These systems are around because we cannot make sense out of chaos and over complication easily, as it
does not fit into our current collective ability and learning styles. Our life is so
complex we need many aids to assist us. An animal wakes up each day and does
nothing planned; we wake up in the morning and in the first few minutes we are
governed by systems and linear processes that are designed to get us through
the day and through our calculated programmed life.
Due
to our unnatural systematic complex lifestyle that we have created for
ourselves, it is then much easier to just follow these processes and systems
because it’s sociably acceptable; easier due to all sorts of constraints (time,
money, health etc) that limit our ability to be creative and liberated. We are
also constrained by the many fears and anxieties from even attempting to
deviate away from our known systems and processes that govern our every
movement. Fear is crippling us and our natural need to take risks (chemical).
This is because many people (mostly incompetent people) hate change (but long
for it constantly), so therefore hate the changers (until they make a good
change that makes life easier).
Look,
all I am saying is that we all (engineering, psychology, legal, production etc)
need to start using collective mindfulness, stop competing for sector and
individual recognition, stop moving forward into more over complex systems and
ideas, and stop the flood of individual ideas that are based around what is
collectively required to be done in the first place. Our OHS in design
Australia is pretty good, sure some things need to be incorporated more such as
human factors, influences, judgments, but all in all it’s not too bad. We just
need to take the time to understand and use what is available now in basic
methods before we go off thinking of better ways to improve safety.
This
issue of everyone adding to the system is allowing for things to develop out of
context and out of control to a point people have forgotten what is standard
and what is not. We need to move to a ‘back to basics’ (BTB) mentality and
build back up from there. If we used a maturity chart to collectively show were
OHS is today in business, I think we would be sullenly disappointed but not
surprised because people have switched off.
I
think OHS in business needs to be re-evaluated on this basis; to include all
influences required to make the best choices. I acknowledge that (but don’t
necessarily like it) we are enslaved creatures of systems, creatures that are
programmed to follow, creatures set and governed by laws and rules with only a
few exceptions to this rule (true leaders). As this is true, we need to
collectively agree that this is the only option we have and that we must make
rules and systems unified and set basic rules etc as non negotiable. This would
stop everyone developing over-complicated silver bullets and making things up
as they go along as if they know everything. If we have to use a SWMS, the SWMS
needs to be amalgamated as a one document template to be used by all business
(not every business making up their own versions). If we are to use a risk
assessment form, then it needs to be a common template designed for that
industry. If the risk assessment (or task) requires input from a specialist
sector i.e psychology, then a psychologist has to be involved and that
psychologist must sign it off. If it requires input from a scientist, then a
scientist has to be used and they have to sign it off, if advice from workers
needs to be used, then it must be used.
So, the big question;
where to now...
Read
the OHS Acts and understand Regulation, follow codes of practice, guidelines
and other industry advice because this is our current motivation and means.
Communicate with and value your workers. Share ideas and educate those ideas.
Learn what motivates your workers. Learn what your workers are good at, use
those abilities. Put hierarchy away and rid silos. Stop competing and fearing
others who innovate or work hard. Understand people are different than you.
Reward those who both do their job well and those who go that bit further, and
those who at least try. Make time. In my observations in the workplace, I see
that practicable time is not given to safety by managers, go on ask yourself;
how much time did you give to safety last week. Safety is mostly treated as a
chore, as a side project that gets done after everything else. Sadly, proof of
this inaction is in the many lives changed each year through injury and death.
And lastly, leaders and managers need to do safety walks that are not about them,
but about others. Don’t go walking around in some fake attitude of power and
authority looking to justify your walk by finding something trivial and then
looking for some to point a finger at. We are all human, trying to make sense
of things also.
