What managers want from safety professionals

Barrie Hill, a speaker at The Safety Conference, considers 'What management wants from safety professionals'.

Barrie Hill is the general manager engineering services at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), and he is due to speak at The Safety Conference, which is sponsored by WorkCover NSW and hosted by the Safety Institute of Australia, to run from October 26-28 at the Sydney Showground, Sydney Olympic Park, Australia.

The role of the safety professional is particularly difficult.

Much has been written about the need for a broad approach that encompasses both supporting consultative roles (carrot) and strong directive roles (stick).

In reality, the ultimate success for safety professionals to progressively work themselves out of a job step by step - to quietly walk away from your operation knowing that the safety culture you have developed and put in place is internalised, effective, self-sufficient and continuously improving.

The best-practice organisation of medium size sees possibly one safety professional acting as a facilitator for training and as a conduit from the outside world for improvement practice.

All staff at all levels support a culture that recognises their responsible contribution at all times is what makes their life at work and that of their colleagues safe.

Acceptance of personal responsibility for safety at all organisational levels is the key factor and final success goal.

But how do we get there? As a start don't feel it is impossible - others have achieved this outcome and I managed to get close.

At the other end of the scale, we see a policing mentality particularly evident in Australian public service operations.

My thesis is that this mentality is a hangover from Australia's earliest colonial past - the jailer/crim syndrome.

I would advocate that the legislated concept of Workplace Health and Safety Committees is a reflection of this, as is any operation with a whole division of safety staff effectively disconnected from day to day 'coalface' operations.

I have found that the outcome of a policing mentality is the antitheses of safety best practice, with many levels of supervision and management abrogating responsibility for safety matters to 'other' parties.

Everything becomes the fault of the worker (crim) to be sorted out by profound documents (the law) with penalties defined by safety professionals (jailers).

The more common scenario is of a manager or senior safety professional joining an operation and finding a very mixed bag of good and poor safety culture issues.

Such situations cannot be changed overnight and we find that a period of three years is required to turn the operation around to a proactive safety performance, and then only on the basis of a carefully designed program with commitment from all levels.

Moving from complacency to commitment can in itself be a long process.

'Why should we take an interest in safety - we haven't killed anyone around here yet?' is about as low as you can start.

How often have you heard 'it will not be until we kill someone that 'they' will wake up to the current problems'? Shock situations do provide an organisation wake-up call, but change is best generated by thoughtful management without the need for disasters.

Shock situations generally lead to poor outcomes, as there is pressure on management to be seen to act and act quickly.

Quick action in most cases precludes thoughtful reflection from the workforce, and may involve short-term external consultants, with little or no knowledge of your circumstances.

It rules out those solutions aimed at modifying deep-seated cultural issues.

More policing is a typical quick fix doomed to failure.

I have seen the most remarkable safety culture turnarounds come from long-term consistent small changes driven by safety event reporting, investigation and implementation of subsequent improvement recommendations, driven solely by line management, with occasional safety professional support.

The most effective support has been the introduction of safety event investigation training for all levels of the workforce, followed by action learning on real event investigations.

Workforce involvement in real event investigation has the effect of building up knowledge on scenarios that work to enhance safety and scenarios that could lead to potentially fatal outcomes.

After event investigation exposure, the key future action plans that emerge for each individual are: I will slow down and plan my work more carefully; I will analyse the risks; I will seek help from my team; I will not let that (poor outcome) happen to me or my mates.

Safety improvement tasks generally fall into two categories: human factors and mechanical factors.

In the end, it can be argued that everything that impacts on operational safety can be brought back to human factors.

The mechanical aspects of designing and maintaining safe workplaces are relatively straightforward with many codes, standards and good previous examples to use as benchmarks.

Early interactions of designers with safety professionals are vital as most designers, particularly engineers, have little exposure to human factors in the early years of their work.

Management of these processes and interactions with safety professionals emerges as the key factor as again, control of the whole work process comes ultimately back to management responsibility.

However, simply relying on the concept of management responsibility may also raise a serious practical problem that is not easily overcome.

Many people are promoted to broader management responsibility without the personal practical knowledge or understanding of the human factors that contribute to good safety outcomes.

When a person asks about pursuing a career in safety, the first question must be 'What is your frustration tolerance'? Safety is an extremely demanding career.

The problems to be handled are often diffuse and hard to come to grips with.

The rewards are few and far between and often unconvincing.

Nobody tells you what the next accidents are going to be.

The importance and significance of safety in an organisation are in most cases not sufficiently recognised.

The real results and rewards are in people not being damaged.

It is often very difficult to know whether the overall likelihood of damage to people at work has been reduced because of your efforts.

And why should it all seem to be such a never-ending uphill battle in many cases? At a personal level, your work will involve a high level of direct contact with many other people in all types of work and at all organisation levels.

You need to have or develop an interaction style that consistently convinces others of your deep personal concern about the safety of people in all work situations.

The key concepts are persistence, knowledge, experience and a genuine understanding.

Lack of convincing commitment by line management and supporting professionals can be seriously counterproductive.

I noted earlier that overcoming a policing mentality is vital if serious improvement is to be made.

But how do we convince others of our commitment and integrity and bring them willingly along to best practice safety performance? We have to start with our own performance, in particular the differences between what we say and what we do.

Safety policing falls down because the safety professional rarely gets the opportunity to actively demonstrate the personal practical knowledge and actions that are so necessary to convince others in the workplace.

For case studies of successful safety culture enhancement and Mr Hill's prescription for career success in the safety profession, reserve a place at The Safety Conference, which is sponsored by WorkCover NSW and hosted by The Safety Institute of Australia.

The Safety Conference will run in conjunction with The Safety Show from Wednesday 26 to Friday 28 October at Southee Complex and The Dome, Hall 2 respectively at the Sydney Showground, Sydney Olympic Park, Australia.

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