Safety Culture in Top Management - The Workplace Safety & Health Act

angelswerkz

Starting to get Involved
Hi, I just wanted to post this because I am sure that there some other professionals out there facing the same issues. It would be great if ideas on how to deal with it can be attained.

First of all, I am a EHS personnel. I am also the WSH Committee Chairman, a Risk Management Leader and more to come. As the government have stated that all industries is covered under the Workplace Safety & Health Act. Companies that is not aware of the safety requirements and compliance tends to scramble and employs somebody to cover for them. As in generating Risk Assessment, SWP and etc. Problems I am facing is that only in documentation everything looks great. But the management does not want to support or some top managements who are committee members blatantly disregards the safety of their workers and prefer the short cut way. I am sure you know where I am coming from.

If any of you have faced the same scenarios, do indicate and it might be useful to me and all. Cheers. :D
 

Jen Kirley

Quality and Auditing Expert
Leader
Admin
Re: Safety Culture in Top Management

Hello angelswerkz.

Of course there have been many sad tales of the kind told here. It is the same with quality, safety, environmental... it is about the push-pull between the forces of the marketplace and wishing to do well; it's about the naturally occurring belief that nothing bad will become of those who look the other way, and it's about moral hazard.

It is a story told over and over again through time, recorded as early as the ancient Greek tragic plays.

Look through the linked related threads at the bottom of this page. When you open them, yet others may show. In this way you may read what you wanted to know faster than waiting for responses. But there will probably be new responses too.
 

angelswerkz

Starting to get Involved
Re: Safety Culture in Top Management

Hi Jennifer,

I understand and read through the threads. Its amazing how the perspective of certain individuals really thinks. For they know that there is liabilities for non comformances but yet they still follow their way of doing things. Really boggles my mind. I can't be going to the management and keep on saying about legal requirements and compliance and penalty or imprisonment. Well my job is not to scare people or be a legal advisor. Hopefully there is a better way to cultivate the culture in them. Actually I feel pity for them for not treasuring what they have. Thanks for the advice. Cheers.
 
K

kgott

Re: Safety Culture in Top Management

angelswerkz. Welcome to the reality club.

All you can do is put everything you tell management in writing so that it generates a record of them being informed and at the same you cover your arse.

You don’t need to keep repeating yourself just send them an email if you can, that describes the problem, possible solutions and remind them that problem is not fixed and that you request action on the matter.

Keep these details in a diary and record the details of emails sent, dates, time, number etc if possible.

If you don’t have email document everything you said to the boss and the time, dates and his/her responses etc.

Look at it from this perspective, if someone gets badly hurt or killed, you and the boss will be facing a court who is going to be asking these questions, amongst others,

· what did you know and when did you know it and the other question will be
· what did you do about it.

It’s quite common for managers to hag underlings out to dry and it’s also common for organisations to employ a bum boy/girl for when things go wrong so get your documents together. Remember the advice you will find in the auditing forums on the Cove, if it isn’t documented it didn’t happen.
 

somashekar

Leader
Admin
Hiii....
You can do two things.
One is blame the management and be passive.
Other is take a step further and involve people to keep showing to management that collectively it is a simple and a planned task to bring about safety culture amongst all who are associated in the workplace. It does not everytime call for investing money or making safety culture an overblown activity that people see as more predominent that the work. Unless otherwise the top management is physically stopping you from your safety related activities (which I guess is not the case) lack of management support is sometimes a myth that we see and the reality can be different. Just look to win the management confidence and no more like :applause: :agree: :agree1: from the top management.
Slowly but surely you can see a passive support from top management and that is your victory.
 

angelswerkz

Starting to get Involved
Re: Safety Culture in Top Management

Hi Kgott,

Great advice. I will do that, so far I have been documenting the relevant documents as per required. But can I ask you a question? I am committed in my job and will always try my best to execute any task. Is there another solution to this, maybe a way to change their culture? I would have quit my job if the market here is not saturated. I am only a supervisor and the rest of my committee members are managers and above. I anticipated that they won't listen to me even if I indicated the importance attached with the Act or Code of Practice. Cheers.
 

angelswerkz

Starting to get Involved
Hi Somashekar,

I would love to taste that victory. The point is not about winning but more to being more resposible towards the job. I am trying to stay calm and try to overcome this in a very diplomatic manner. But if things is moving along fine, I can see that there might be progression for me. Thanks for the good advise. Really appreciate it. Cheers.
 

angelswerkz

Starting to get Involved
Dear Friends,

I sincerely think that the bottomline is monetary when it comes to the bossess. The company would like to attain OHSAS 18001 and the first thing the GM ask me is, how do we sell this? Well great, now I have to promote OHSAS and tell him the benefits. This really is bothering me.
 
K

kgott

Somashekar; a couple of good points there.

I’m not sure what angelswerkz faces exactly but anyone who does safety soon learns the they have to get out there and try to get things done themselves because otherwise they will be portrayed as the problem and not the solution.

After 20 years of being in safety I’m still interested in learning how to be more effective because a) I still have a lot to learn and b) what I have learned is that the crux of a safety persons job is the same as a quality persons job, get out there and solve problems and try to improve things by working with and through others. Demming once said that the role of a leader is to help others do a better job and when I read that, I’ve done that ever since.

I got the impression that angelswerkz was facing a bit of a crisis hence my suggestions.

One of the things I learned in my time that management owns and controls the quality, safety whatever system, and through their behaviours and values they create and grow the organisational culture.
People like us always try to influence the culture, management and the staff by hammering away at the benefits for both parties alike but nothing brings results like management decision and action.
 
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K

kgott

Re: Safety Culture in Top Management

Angelswerkz; the best thing you can do is work with your people and help and or, get them to develop a safe way of doing the work they do, as safely as it can be done given the tools you have to work with.

Identify the hazards in the work and then assess the risk in the hazard then develop some controls to reduce the risk.

A hazard is a source of harm and risk is ‘what’s the chances of it happening” It’s also the ‘how bad would it be.’ If you don’t have a proper risk assessment matrix to work with just work on a scale of 1 to 7. Look on the Cove for a risk assessment matrix.

Get your people to do it all as much of the work themselves as possible because then:

They will all be familiar with the issues and the problems in the nature of the hazard and in the controls for the hazards.

They will be familiar with the complexity involved in reaching decisions etc but, by far the biggest advantage there will be that there will more commitment to the final work method because they will have been involved in the decision making which in turn means, there will be more ‘muscle’ to make it work and make it stick.

Make sure they all know and understand what the safe way of doing the job is.

Your role is to be the helper, to guide them through the process and to be the advisor and to get the resources for them as best you can. If you do this you will be demonstrating leadership.

Get them to make the decision by consensus which means that the final agreed decision will most likely be nearly everyone’s second choice.
 
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