ohsmanagementsystems.com.au

This is a great new free iphone app called ijsa. You create an accout, then you can set up workers, worksites and tasks, then save jsaa and actions required, assessing the risk on the way to finding your controls. Easy to use. For more info

http://www.safetyculture.com.au/ijsa/

Safety Ambassadors

One of the best ways to get involved in Safe Work Australia Week is by becoming a Safe Work Australia Week Safety Ambassador.

Safety Ambassadors are working Australians who have a passion for health and safety and are dedicated to making workplaces safer. In previous years Safety Ambassadors have included Ministers, CEOs, health and safety representatives, managers and employees from a wide range of industries.

Click here for more information

Here is a nice summary written by Dominic Cooper   www.behavioral-safety.com  Let us know what you think…

The common Safety Leadership strategies appear to be:

[1] Encouraging people to take personal responsibility for safety by setting expectations for each layer (Senior, Middle, Front-line management, and employees) linked to clear goals. These should be created at a dedicated session where the CEO outlines his/her vision and senior managers determine how to translate that into concrete actions. It is important to ensure the strategies and interventions adopted are aligned to their strategic intent and do not just boil down to a simple signing of the safety policy. A reinforcement strategy is for all board members to hold a weekly conference call where plant managers are required to discuss incidents occurring in the previous week, root cause analysis results, corrective actions, best practices, etc. At plant/operation levels, morning meetings should be held to discuss any and all pressing safety issues. Effectiveness assessments are held with 360 reviews of managers, an organizational wide safety climate survey and further diagnostics around organizational systems.

[2] Putting a robust Risk or Safety management system in place encompassing (but not limited to) preventive maintenance, operation procedures, inspections, permit to work systems, safety talks, Safety committees, risk assessments, near miss reporting, training, management of change, risk management plans, etc. In terms of effectiveness, the monitoring focus is primarily on incident rates (lagging indicators), safety surveys, and Gap Analyses via Internal Audit functions (leading Indicators).

[3] Education & Awareness: Providing safety leadership training so that safety leadership becomes a corporate value. Effectiveness assessment of the training strategy revolves around employees visibly observing the leadership commitment to a safe workplace, and leaders in the organization being more knowledgeable on safety with line management accepting safety responsibilities. However, a comment was made that realistically education is not effective for more than a few days post course. This implies that some type of monitoring system is required to ensure attendees are held accountable for demonstrating the behaviors taught (leading Indicator).

[4] Encouraging the management team (from the most senior down) to exhibit visible leadership commitment to a safe workplace. This visible demonstration appears to take the form of chairing of safety meetings, ownership of the SMS (i.e. conducting risk assessments, investigating accidents), involvement in quarterly reviews & training, two-way dialogues about safety, going around site, looking around and talking with people. Effectiveness is assessed by monitoring the number and quality of managerial observations / conversations (leading Indicator). Again, this implies that some type of robust, but easily accessible tracking system is required to monitor the outcomes of the observations and discussions.

WHY?

Benefits of an OHSMS

• helping create safer work environments
• reducing injuries and injury-related costs – by pre-empting injuries, employers save money on medical expenses, the injured employee’s wages, insurance claim excesses, replacement labour and increased workers’ compensation insurance premiums
• improving business opportunities – many companies have preferentia
• l purchasing policies that favour purchasing products or services from companies with an OHSMS
• providing measurable systems that can verify OHS performance
• demonstrating you are meeting legal requirements
• meet moral requirements as leaders – how would you feel if there was a workplace death, and you hadn’t been doing everything possible to prevent incidents?
• enhancing the organisation’s reputation
• worlds best practice and benchmarking

Research shows that there are clear links between good OHS management systems and long-term business efficiency.

ABS – 2000 – 2006

Sedentary v High Risk Industries

Decrease in incidents – those forced to implement OHS system (High Risk)

Increase in incidents – sedentary occupations

Avoid Penalties against the OHS Act
Penalties for breaches of the Occupational Health & Safety Act 2004 were substantially increased. The maximum penalties are now $943,290* for companies and $188,658* for individuals.

26(1) Person who manages or controls a workplace failing to ensure the workplace is safe. $188,658 – individual $943,290 – body corporate Indictable offence triable summarily

WHAT IS REQUIRED AND HOW WILL IT LOOK

Commitment form all levels and functions, especially senior management

Enable achievement of the highest levels of OHS Performance

• Sets out OHS policy and objectives
• Establishes, assesses and reviews the effectiveness of procedures
• Achieves conformance with the OHS policy and objectives
• Demonstrates conformance to others

OHS Policy

OHS Plan

IMPLEMENTATION

Measurement and Evaluation

Review

Continuous Improvement

HOW WILL OHS&HR MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS HELP?

Gap Analysis

Developing and Implementation Plan

Allocating and auditing against responsibilities

Building on / refining current system

Training / Meetings / Tracking the Plan / culture building activities

Preparing documentation for audits

WHAT WILL CHANGE

Policy is there, procedures are there –

Do they cover all areas required by AS 4801?

• A plan – Set targets / allocated responsibilities
• Measuring success PPIs
• Audits – Internal / External
• Procedural implementation
• Are they implemented?
• Are people working under procedures, if not why not
• Do they know what they are
• Are they practical
• Ultimately: Cultural change – like seatbelts

WHAT SHOULD THE CULTURE LOOK LIKE?

The change in culture that we want to bring about will be defined by;

Reporting Culture –
where staff and contactors seek to report unsafe conditions, near misses and any concerns they have about safety.
encourage to report the good with the bad.
Just Culture –
where people promote safety rather than allocating blame or punishment for reporting errors (incidents / near misses / safety breaches)
Learning Culture –
a Learning Culture will allow people to understand and comfortably question safety procedures and requirements
Think Safety Culture -
The first thought before starting a new task – is this safe, what do we need to do to make this safe, we are not starting until it is
All in this together Culture -
Everyone cares for each others safety and understands the role they play. Top to bottom.
Leading by Example Culture -
Critical leaders are identified, OHS competencies known and measured, practice what they preach

HOW LONG WILL IT TAKE

18 months – 2 years for AS4801

Milestone half way – SafetyMAP Initial Level?

 The following information was drafted in order to make an argument for the affirmative for this recent ComCare Debate.

Peter Druker – ‘you can’t manage what you can’t measure’ Definition according to AS 4804 1997 Safety performance: the measurable results of the OHS management system related to the organisations control of health and safety risks, based on its OHS policy, objectives and targets. Performance measurement includes measurement of OHS management, activities and results.

Some positive results to report: In Tasmania since the mid 1990s workplace injuries have fallen 50%, over the last decade workers’ comp premiums have dropped by 45 % ComCare has reported general reductions in claims over the past decade Interim report on the National OHS Strategy 2002-2012 – Released by Safe Work Australia. Australia achieved a 16% improvement in the incidence of injury and musculoskeletal claims between the base period and 2006 to 2007.

Issues with OHS Measuring

MEASURING in OHS is inherently tricky, particularly because we are often aiming for an absence of events rather than a presence: For example, if we measure the number of reported incidents, what is the optimum result? Do we want more or less reported incidents? We don’t want incidents to happen, but if they are happening, we don’t what them left unreported? If we can’t work out what the optimum result is, what is the point of measuring?

CURRENTLY ACCEPTED METHOD – BALANCED SCORECARD

Balanced scorecard looks at 4 perspectives:

• management,
• operational,
• customer and
• learning

Preventative Measures (1-3)

1. A MIX OF AUDITING Internal (provide good training) External (find a good auditor!!)

2. PPIs based on

• OHS planning objectives and targets
• Maturity of the system
• Previously identified gaps
• Risk exposure
• Not covering areas already covered in audits (double up)
• Not covering areas of little concern
• Aim to measure both OHS processes (qualitative and quantitative)
• Safety performance / behaviours (qualitative)

PPIs that are not: 

• Difficult or time consuming to measure and collate 
• Difficult to compare 
• Subject to random variation 
• Encourage under or over reporting 
• Have an arbitrary relationship with LTIs 
• Only measure a number of events and not the effectiveness 
• Irrelevant / unnecessary / obsolete

3. Culture or Climate measures

4. Incident Data/Outcome Indicators /Lag indicators

Lag indicators such as LTIs etc (only indicators required by OHS law in Australia) are critizised for measuring failure, and absence of that failure does not mean that suitable risk measures are in place. Useful, but not in isolation.

• LTIs
• LTIFRs
• Number of claims / claim costs
• Incidents/near misses/hazards by type, number, various classifications

WHERE DO YOU FIND THIS STUFF

Any OHS professional with a google bar, should be able to customise there own measurement based on readily available information and guidance.

1. Audits – SafetyMAP or AS4801, these will include development of internal auditing. Seen as one of the methods of measuring performance, I believe that based on currently available measurement and benchmarking tools, auditing is a hugh part of what we should be focusing on. An external audit against AS4801 or SafeyMAP, assuming the auditor is good, should provide a performance report which will uncover any gaps in systems and systems implementation. Any system which is at this maturity level will also have internal auditing happening on a regular basis as well.

 Some evidence from David Valentine SHE Reporting Analyst (Consultant) Email david.valentine2@baesystems.com  www.baesystems.com/australia  – “From an over-all Australian perspective looking at the first two ABS Workplace injury Surveys they clearly prove that an implemented and used OHS management system works. High risk occupations detailed below were a focus for enforced OHS risk management systems and the considered safe sedentary occupations were not.” IF you compare the % improvement of the High Risk Occupations v the Sedentary, you will see that improvements have occured in the High Risk Opccupations, where systems were implimented. There were increases in incidents in the sedentary group!

2. Generic PPI measures have been formulated for construction and minerals industries for example. The minerals industry document is particularly good, with numerous measures to choose from. Comcare also has a factsheet and guidance on PPIs which include sample PPIs

3. Safety Climate – The Minerals Council of Australia completed an extensive Safety Climate survey in 1999. This survey was planned to be repeated in 5 years time, but it was decided that it was better to be done at the individual company level. The questions on this survey are available and a great starting point to develop your own survey. SafeMap conducted this study, and have used continuing data to compare against the original benchmark. Interestingly, the results from 1999 – 2003 show a decline in safety climate, a number of recommendations have been provided to the industry for future planning – the real purpose of measuring fulfilled. Outcome: 2004 – Guidance on positive performance measurement produced. In 2009 Comcare have provided (via website) an “Organisational health assessment tool” self assessment. This questionnaire takes a broader approach including items like reputation, job satisfaction etc to provide an overall picture. Their research has proved that there is a direct connection between corporate health and business performance. Backed up by Dr Ian Woods, a senior research analyst for AMP Capital investors, OH&S performance is considered by investor as a good measure of management quality in many high-risk industries.

4. Injury related records – Available on the safework australia website – AS 1885.1-1990 Workplace injury and disease recording standard. Comcare Customer Information System – allows automated reports relating to Compensation Claims.

ARE WE DOING IT AT AN ORGANISATIONAL LEVEL?

I can provide 3 examples, MCC, Arts Centre and MRC have a list of monthly and annual OHS performance measures that are reported against. The scorecards have a balance of all the factors mentioned.

WHAT IS NOT CURRENTLY AVAILABLE

Extensive benchmarking opportunities – we need to look outside our organisation too. I believe that more can be done at the Industry level. Wouldn’t it be great if you could plug your results into a website and get a report back as to where you stand against other organizations within your industry? These results could include

• OHS system certification status.
• some basic injury reporting data
• a generic OHS culture survey 
•  OHS proactive program (systems)
• OHS prevention budget / staff member

If you keep in mind the following objectives when formulating your performance measures, you can’t go wrong: 

What is the aim of measuring

• To reward staff for good safety behaviours 
• To find gaps and therefore be able to seal them
• To help your business case for the right OHS budget in the future
• To ultimately improve OHS and therefore the health and profit of your business in general If you do not measure then how do you know how you are traveling?

The challenge than is to pick the ‘right’ KPIs to measure. Most are good at collecting data. The more critical and important step of evaluation the data is often left undone. It’s via the evaluation process that one identifies trends, anomalies and emerging issues. Otherwise, collecting data is a waste of time!

Click on the link and complete our survey, you will be able to view the results at the end. See how your business compares.

http://www.oneminutepoll.com/OneMinutePoll/OneMinuteSurvey.aspx?SID=-2147482153

I have started a group on Linkedin. If you are a member on Linkedin, and would like to join this group, send me an email and I will invite you. I am hoping to get some good OHS related discussions and articles going, so if your are interested in OHS it could be good for you. It is free to set up a Linkedin account too.