OHS professionals must be "tuned in" to their employer's goals - and refrain from badgering executives with minutiae - if they're to have any hope of developing a successful workplace safety culture, says a safety manager of 32 years' experience.
Stan Sexton, who is the Western Australian Public Transport Authority's (PTA's) corporate manager safety, told OHS Alert that while many OHS professionals believe the "whole world revolves around safety", it isn't always at the forefront of executives' minds.
"They've got competing priorities," he says, adding that the PTA's number-one concern is conveying four million passengers a week.
"What I do with any employer is try to get safety as a thread.
"You've got to be tuned into the ultimate outcome of the organisation, threading safety into [its] corporate governance."
It is critical, Sexton says, to develop healthy working relationships with executives and chief officers and to show boards how safety can protect their interests and "underpin the service delivery or commercial objective they're trying to achieve".
But safety personnel who are "obsessed with minutiae" (an electrical cord left on a walkway, for example) at the expense of the company's interests "will not get the executive's ear" and "will not achieve anything".
"Without commitment at the top you will not be successful," he says.
"A safety professional [must be] tactically astute. It's no use just dealing with the cable across the floor. You've got to get an understanding of how to take an organisation forward."
Reduce workers' comp costs and increase morale
Sexton, who has been an OHS professional for more than three decades in both Australia and his native UK, says developing a successful safety culture is not an exact science, and that it can take years of hard work to perfect a formula.
He says it took him about six years to develop the formula he now uses, which has produced results.
During his time with the Manchester Police in England, LTIs fell by 74 per cent in four years, he says. And the PTA, where he now works, won the 2009 Western Australian Work Safety Award for best public-sector OHS management system (see Western Australia announces...).
Other benefits of a strong OHS culture include reduced absences and workers' compensation costs, and increased morale, Sexton says.
He says he believes that while morale "is a subtlety", it reduces stress-related conditions and increases employee commitment.
"If you look after [employees'] welfare... and invest in them, you will get a positive return in productivity, attendance at work [and] reduced accidents."
Sexton also recommends appointing a safety champion among the "working people" within each division, to ensure "everyday" safety and risk-management issues are dealt with.
Executive buy-in is crucial, but if you fail to "engage the hearts and minds of your people at the coal face" you're unlikely to succeed, he says.
Supervisors must embody OHS
Sexton says the final piece of his "equation" is getting supervisors and managers onboard.
"You've got to get the managers and supervisors applying and embodying [OHS] principles every day," he says.
According to Sexton, safety professionals should say to supervisors, "Look, don't be afraid of safety, but make sure it is a consideration and a thread in your everyday work; out of all the subjects you deal with, the one that will come back to bite you is safety."
On a gloomier note, Sexton says Australia has one of the worst OHS records in the developed world, and more must be done to improve it.
"Australia is a great country, but there's a darker side," he says.
No comments:
Post a Comment