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

K

kgott

#11
The benefits of injury free working are:

The people at risk will go home safety each day and live to earn another days pay.

Work will be better planned and executed therefore more efficient and effective.

Morale will rise

The company will save money because their workers compensation costs will not rise as fast as they otherwise will.

If you do as I suggest and facilitate the development of the safe way of working you will have taken the first step to being a team, a real team, not just a mob labelled a team.

Management think in terms of how much is this going to cost but you need to try and get them to ask themselves, how much might it cost if they don’t do it safely?

Go back ISO 9001 4.1 “Planning and designing company process to achieve planned results” THIS IS THE KEY!!!! (yes; I am shouting at you) I have only learned since I have been in quality.

Hope this helps
 
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S

samsung

#12
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.
Yes, I do agree. The inspector or the court of law may ask "What did you do to prevent this accident from happening in the first place?" and unless one has a robust system in place, answering to such questions may often become a challenging task and in the end, a case is registered for gross negligence on the part of management.

If nothing works, go by the advice given by other posters.

Good luck.
 

angelswerkz

Starting to get Involved
#13
Re: Safety Culture in Top Management

Dear Friends,

Problems I am facing is implementing, documentating, management support. There is none so far. Although I am new to this, but sincerely I find that if the culture is there then it would make a difference. I am constantly learning new things everyday. Thanks all for the advice. That's why I like Elsmar. Straight forward advice. Thanks All
 

Steve Prevette

Deming Disciple
Staff member
Super Moderator
#14
I've worked in the EHS field now for 15 years. Primarily applied quality tools to safety improvements. Top management support is important, but as with many other issues, there can be some successes at the grass roots level.

I do have a website with analysis materials, mostly EHS, at http://www.efcog.org/wg/esh_es/Statistical_Process_Control/index.htm This page is set up to support US Government work, but is made available to the public at no cost (and no copyright for that matter).
 

Jen Kirley

Quality and Auditing Expert
Staff member
Admin
#15
It truly is a big job to start from scratch. Culture is a force that is heavily influenced by the personalities of people with the power. Their personalities are influenced by their history, education, social mores, ideals, and other factors. I have never seen an epiphany such as with Scrooge in the Dickens story A Christmas Carol.

So, get used to the idea of having to "sell" what you know is right. The truth is, you are dealing with people whose primary language is money. Costs can be estimated using the same kind of economic curve as costs of poor quality. One could plot a point where the costs and benefits meet. Yes, that's a cold way of looking at impact to humanity, but you are just translating into the language of money.

Costs to business are listed in Table 4 of a paper titled The Economics of Safety, Health, and Well-Being at Work: An Overview:
  • Interruption in production immediately following the accident
  • Morale effects on coworkers
  • Personnel allocated to investigating and writing up the accident
  • Recruitment and training costs for replacement workers
  • Reduced quality of recruitment pool
  • Damage to equipment and materials (if not identified an allocated through routine accounting procedures)
  • Reduction in product quality following the accident
  • Reduced productivity of injured workers on light duty
  • Overhead cost of spare capacity maintained in order to absorb the cost of accidents
I have two attachments related to safety costs and program tools that you may find helpful.

I recommend you document what you do, because should the worst happen as with BP in Texas City and the Massey Mine explosion you can present evidence that you did your best if you find you must defend yourself.

I hope this helps!
 
K

kgott

#16
Just a little rhetorical story
Personnel allocated to investigating and writing up the accident

When I mentioned this once the response was ‘well we have to pay you anyway so thats not a cost.”

Increased workers compensation premiums (employers have to carry WC insurance in Australia)
I took this line on a job once and the boss’s response was ‘that’s why we pay them’ and “they always go up anyway’ and ‘we might as well get something for our premiums’

I was left a little deflated after each of these responses.
 
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K

kgott

#17
That’s very good Jennifer. I like the way you do the FEMA's. I have rummaged through my safety stuff and I found these two attachments in case it helps anyone.

The idea is that a risk register is created and then the risk assessment matrix is ued to assess the risk in each hazard.

In the matrix, the severity of the hazard remains the same. E.g. if a vehicle crashes the impact or severity remains the same so only the likelihood and management of the event can change to reduce the risk.

Hope it helps
 

Attachments

somashekar

Staff member
Super Moderator
#18
Just a little rhetorical story
Personnel allocated to investigating and writing up the accident

When I mentioned this once the response was ‘well we have to pay you anyway so thats not a cost.”

Increased workers compensation premiums (employers have to carry WC insurance in Australia)
I took this line on a job once and the boss’s response was ‘that’s why we pay them’ and “they always go up anyway’ and ‘we might as well get something for our premiums’

I was left a little deflated after each of these responses.
:mg: ... I have not used my accident and life insurance >>>>
 

angelswerkz

Starting to get Involved
#19
Hi Friends,

As you guys have guessed. An incident occured at one of the warehouse. Now the management is roping me in to do an investigation and action plan(required by client). Damages to the clients goods is estimated above 1 million. There is no injury though. Need some help now. Do any of you guys have a detailed accident/incident investigation report? Any advice? Thanks and cheers.
 
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