I suggest that routine reviews should be the main source of objectives. If we can't find actually useful enhancements of our systems and processes, don't bother. Most of this thread sounds like we are choosing the flavour of our next ice cream just for fun.

Given that an in-depth review of performance, contexts, stakeholders, compliance, failures, developments, indicators etc etc must always reveal opportunities and gaps, why look any further? If we can't look at an objective and see it leading to an actually better safety world, and that it's relevant to our own work site, what box-ticking game are we playing?

If anyone's interested, I did more research on this and published a post to various media. It goes into more detail about the Working Safer Vision and also some available World Health Organisation data on road deaths per 100,000 population.

For road deaths, out of 188 countries, NZ is 29th, but after you're out of the top 30-40, most countries are those still developing roads and safety laws, so 29th isn't anything to be proud of. Most western European countries have far lower rates than us. But you might be surprised to know who is worse than NZ. The USA, for example, has a lot higher rate than us. We are on a par with Italy. But if you've ever driven in Italy, you won't be using that as boasting rights.

Here is a link to my analysis: http://public.safetybase.co.nz/accident-statistics-adjusted-data/

That was a reply to Andrew. Sorry, still working this app out.

I was talking about work related fatalities and serious non-fatal injuries. ACC figures may include long term health issues, which are specifically acknowledged in the Working Safer paper as hugely more than immediate deaths. But not in included in the goals. They acknowledge that. Can you check that out?

Those last two comments by Andrew and Rob probably sum it up. Neither party should make petty generalisations about the other.

My sympathies lie to some extent with Worksafe. At least they go out on most days pointing at real things to say they are unsafe. Their strong suit just isn’t going to be about safety systems. That’s too long term. They are on the front line.

But the landscape is full of “consultants” waving bits of paper as solutions. Unless they can back the paper up with some glue to hold it all together, they need to be called out for the charlatans they are.

Simon

Great speech. I can also commend it, having just read it.

In his closing comments, Prof Hopkins appears genuinely relieved to have personally abandoned the word culture as it may apply to safety.

For our long-suffering Forum safety advisors of all types, I think we should also be encouraged by this quote:

"Now, to which I say, wow, if I were a safety practitioner, I would breathe a sigh of relief. I can ditch this concept of safety culture, and get on with what's important, it's the practices in this organisation. I don't need to worry about whether I call this culture, or safety culture. I don't need any other language to deal with this, I can get straight on to the issue of getting, focusing on the organisational practices and getting them right."

Leadership and consistency are all we need, although I think he might have been more explicit about the role of open and authentic employee engagement.

I appreciated the last two candid comments. I too shrank back from the cost, but also the bother of having to get higher than "member" status with either of our esteemed safety clubs. I'm not against the need for some sort of professional status, but I looked at Safe Plus and just could not see how it would ever become mainstream. Seems I got that right. Thanks Sarah and Laraine.

With reference to Laraine's comments above about ACC getting involved - I suspect they are far too busy coming up with their own two new schemes for 2019, which in my opinion, look far more collaborative and useful. ACC have been at this stuff for nearly two decades now and they are getting better and better at it. One scheme will be the default for ALL employers. Get that! Not voluntary, like WSMP. That default scheme also has forms of incentive included. The other scheme is a rebuild of AEP.

I analysed these two developments in the following blogs, if anyone is interested: http://public.safetybase.co.nz/48962-2-2-2/ and http://public.safetybase.co.nz/48962-2-2-2-2/

Peter, dare I suggest we don't need a "short, pithy and printable" response to Mike Yardley? Sorry, but journos these days have largely forgotten that dispassionate and balanced reporting of facts is part of their profession. They are part-time entertainers now.

In other words, he knew he was being a prat. The last thing he wants is a dose of common sense to spoil his party.

I've visited this thread a few times and although I detest the use of intimidation and dominance on any person, workplace or not, I've hesitated to comment. Mainly because the sexual harassment side of it is so highly charged these days. Almost any male or non-specialist opinion may be viewed very critically, whether or not it's deserved.

But I'm not sure these types of behaviour really fit into health and safety. Sure, you can have policies, but if, for example physical violence occurs in the workplace, we don't rush over to the hazard register to take notes. Of course it's a hazard, but these things are against the law. I mean, if we employ drivers, we don't put "Drive on the left and stop at red lights" on the hazard register, do we? And the prospect of the average OHS person dealing with these issues makes me shudder. Even HR folks are challenged.

I can't help thinking intimidation should be referred to very specialised people, same as we refer incipient occupational diseases. The role of people "on the ground" probably ought to be prevention and early reporting. And surely some cases of intimidation are criminal offences? What do we do with those? The Labour Party recently kept it "in-house" at the summer camp thing and suffered the consequences. Not sure if this is an OHS vs. HR thing when it's best to refer it "upstairs", wherever that may be.

Good on ya Jan. A fellow member of the Misplaced Apostrophe Police. There's a work van parked up my street with an offer of >Free Quote's< and I swear I'm going to take a paint can to it one dark night...

I knew a cop some years ago who told me this mode of transport, including pedal bikes, is illegal on footpaths. Show me one developed country in the world that tolerates it. NZ needs to clarify this and stick to it. The future is here and electric things are going to be part of it

By the way, I’ve no issue with getting signatures on individual training records, particularly where it’s a key skill. In which case, the trainer needs to sign off on their assessment too, if they have the balls.

But not toolbox meetings, where it’s supposedly a sharing of information.

I’m not totally against this practice. But I’m unconvinced that it’s honest engagement with workers. If you’re an employer with integrity and respect for your people, and you truly value their input, you don’t push a piece of paper under their noses unless you want to cover your own backside. (In which case, you’re probably talking AT them, not with them). They’re not stupid.

I think employers have a choice here: Decide if you would take the risk of treating your workers like responsible people and fail a few times with some of them, or treat them ALL like cattle. The argument for treating people like cattle is always “they behave like cattle”, which is a self-fulfilling prophesy.

For me, the net gain of treating people as if they are responsible far outweighs the costs in the long term.

I agree with Craig Marriott above. I’m aware this practice exists, but I think it gets close to trying to contract out of duties, which we can’t do under the Act. The fact that a worker was present at a meeting, and was “expected” to sign the form is a bit coercive. It does not provide any evidence they understood, or that they were even fully present for the full meeting, or that they were aware what they were signing for.

It’s a very archaic practice in my opinion. If we are engaging effectively with workers, why get them to line up and put their name on a meeting record? It’s just so in the past and very authoritarian. If we are collaborating with workers, we want them to be engaged and owning risks, not tied at the wrist.

Thanks for all the contributions on this topic. I think it’s run it’s course and patterns have emerged. May I offer a broad summary:

1. There is a general consensus that a “culture” can be observed by the level of orderliness, consistency, engagement and integrity in an organisation.

2. To some observers, this is important, and is celebrated when it applies to safety behaviours and is called “safety culture”. Others regard organisational performance as the overarching factor, which leads them to conclude that safety is a “product”, or somewhat indirect result, and that safety as a culture is too tight a definition. This is where I sit.

3. The researchers acknowledge safety culture is an important idea, and describe what it seems to be, but cannot find evidence that it matters in terms of improving safety.

4. It seems unlikely that any safety culture can exist in isolation from a wider comittment to quality. Which means it will show everywhere if it’s real.

Those are, I think, observations we all agree on.

Personally, I think words like “passion” and “culture” add nothing to health and safety, and may even harm the reputation. I acknowledge they are important for promoting safety, as long as we use the pulpit sparingly, and integrate equally with other organisational objectives, rather than edifying our own special interest.

Just as an aside, my original post in here was a brief summary of my website post. I appreciate Drew Rae (above) clearly having read the post, and adding further helpful interpretation.

It's easy to react emotionally against something we hold dearly, based on personal experience, however, my website post http://public.safetybase.co.nz/safety-culture-steam-teacup/ was a serious attempt to summarise what I could from Frank Guldenmund's paper. There is a link in the post to Guldenmund's actual paper, but the intention was to provide a digest of it. Believe me, it's hard going...

Nicely put, Sheri. We don't see a safe and tidy workplace that isn't accompanied by all the other indicators of efficiency. And vice versa. Passion can be left at the door. As you say, safety is not the aim. It's the result. Reminds me of those four levels of competence:

1. Unconscious incompetent. (You're awful and you don't know it).

2. Conscious incompetent. (You're awful but you at least know it).

3. Conscious competent. (You're pretty good, but you have to try all the time).

4. Unconscious competent. (You're darn good and you don't even have to think about it). (Or shout about it, I would add).

For me, item 4 is analogous to a good organisational culture.

I don't think peer-reviewed science can be dismissed too lightly. Good to see some assertive comments, though. I should clarify:

• The research doesn't totally dismiss the importance of believing in "safety culture", but the evidence doesn't suggest it's a necessity for a safer workplace, nor necessarily desirable. An orderly, organised workplace is evidence of good leadership. The scientists just aren't convinced culture is meaningful.
• I agree it's what we do daily that shows commitment. But we can't "manufacture" safety culture per se. Which is the intention of my cup of tea analogy. We often hear organisations thinking they can "dial in" safety culture. But it arises from hard work, integrity and leadership. On that much, I think we all agree.
• I also agree the only thing that really matters is "doing things right". Which, in turn, also means we don't have to be passionate about it, and don't need to be too zealous. After all, it's part of doing business.
• And OK, I admit, I personally think health and safety turns people off partly because they do get preached at. The hardest part of the safety job is adopting the best style of communication to the situation.

That's a real basket load of issues but it's not clear if the 7 events were over the entire 25+ years, or a more recent trend. If the latter, is it age, health, stress, fatigue, work pressure? Have some job factors changed for him? Is he dissatisfied about something?

Either way, I'm sticking with my assertion that everything, from forgetting something (rear doors), to intentional (failing to give way), has cause(s), but they may be beyond our current knowledge to identify or correct. Have you talked to him openly and without blame to see if he has anything going on in his life that is pressuring or distracting him?

Good luck...

I find this topic fascinating. Having read all opinions so far, I am going to be a bit foolish and try to condense what I have read into two opposite but complimentary notions:

1. "Human error" is a weak conclusion, because all we can go a step further to find out why people make decisions and try to engineer out the opportunities to, or consequences of, making these "mistakes".

2. Unreliability of humans is "inevitable". We are, after all, "general practitioners" in this world. We have wide skills but can't be perfect at any of them.

What I see in safety management are conversations dominated by an approach focussed almost entirely on managing hazards. People aren't allowed to "own" risk. We want to withhold ownership, because we are responsible and may be personally liable. Something a bit different is needed. We rarely see conversations about enabling workers to take ownership of whatever residual risk remains after what is "reasonably practicable" has been done.The post above by Brian Parker about a driver not securing a load is a good example of where we cannot hold onto the ownership. As Brian says, the drivers work alone and the variables of securing loads are huge, if not infinite.

I don't at all like using "personal accountability" as a way of scaring workers into thinking about what they are doing. It's just a type of blaming. But I think the concept of risk is something all humans are naturally good at. All animals, particularly wild ones do it, and they are highly conservative about it.

When I give training in hazard and risk management, I get groups to intuitively rank hazards as to "how bad" they are. Then, we do the risk calculating thing (two versions) and invariably, the rankings come out very similarly compared to the intuitive way. We may have created risk assessment tools, but they are no use at all minute by minute. The good news is that we use that intuition constantly and we're good at it. But we don't like to talk to workers about how to take reasonable risks.

I'm suggesting that a no-blame conversation should be going on all the time that literally lets go part of the control and lets workers own it. When I was teaching my daughter to drive, she had a tendency to feel stressed while waiting to pull out of T junctions. Confidence grows with experience, but what I said to her was classic risk management: "It may be unlikely that you will get T-boned pulling out, but if you do, you could be dead. So unless you have almost 100% certainty, don't do it". Notice, I didn't say "You'd be stupid to rush, so I don't ever want to see you do that". I think, (at least I hope), I gave her ownership and some basic thinking skills.

I believe that sort of approach is missing in traditional safety management. It would take time, but we're only talking about residual risk. I'm not flying this as a panacea, but I believe it has its place. It's about instilling responsibility, not accountability, giving recognition and support to workers when they haven't yet reached a level of certainty, and placing importance on their own decision-making. I'd be interested in other comments about this suggestion.