Many OHS professionals however come from academic, or office or technical backgrounds, who have mostly experienced industrial relations as barriers to the sensible safety control measures they recommend. Frequently union and employee stances don’t make OHS sense but they make perfectly sound IR sense. It is this dichotomy that is behind those safety professionals and employers who accuse unions of “using” OHS to further industrial relations ends.
Many OHS professionals however come from academic, or office or technical backgrounds, who have mostly experienced industrial relations as barriers to the sensible safety control measures they recommend. Frequently union and employee stances don’t make OHS sense but they make perfectly sound IR sense. It is this dichotomy that is behind those safety professionals and employers who accuse unions of “using” OHS to further industrial relations ends.
At the moment I am reviewing a draft OHS compliance code for amenities at the workplace. I am also working a morning shift for a communications company from 3am each morning. I have a blind father. My office faces a truck route.
These elements of my life combined when I received a wire story this morning about an initiative to increase the level of pedestrian safety. I found the National Federation for the Blind media release that the article was based on and decided that the request for “a two-year study to determine the best means to provide the blind and other pedestrians with information about the location, motion, speed, and direction of vehicles” fairly reasonable and I look forward to the findings in 2010.
At the moment I am reviewing a draft OHS compliance code for amenities at the workplace. I am also working a morning shift for a communications company from 3am each morning. I have a blind father. My office faces a truck route.
These elements of my life combined when I received a wire story this morning about an initiative to increase the level of pedestrian safety. I found the National Federation for the Blind media release that the article was based on and decided that the request for “a two-year study to determine the best means to provide the blind and other pedestrians with information about the location, motion, speed, and direction of vehicles” fairly reasonable and I look forward to the findings in 2010.
It will be interesting to watch the response that this US Bill will generate from those who see our world changing to accommodate minorities, those driving enthusiasts that give pedestrians and bikes little attention anyway, those advocates who say that pedestrian lights don’t remain on long enough and the right-wing critics of political correctness who are usually fully-sighted ( in the vision sense at least) and able-bodied.
Some of the issues the Secretary of Transportation should consider are:
Basic ergonomic theory is that we don’t try to fit the person to the work environment. Perhaps urban planners and car manufacturers should consider how they can change what they do to ensure that the vehicles are compatible with pedestrian zones and interaction. I for one would ride my bicycle more if the streets were more friendly and drivers more aware.
How do workplace amenities and morning shift affect my perspective? I am not sure that the draft compliance code accommodates disabled workers so I will need to review the document through my father’s eyes, ineffective as they are.
Toilets in many office buildings have Braille labels below the male and female toilet signs. I often wonder how a blind person locates a 6cm Braille label on a 18 square metre wall when they are bursting for a pee and are new to that area. And from experience most people develop blindness after middle age and have little chance of learning Braille so just how many blind people are we serving by Braille toilet signs?
Many of my OHS colleagues have responsibility for environmental safety, some to the extent of being rebadged HSE or OHSE. I have been an ardent advocate of managing business safety and risk issues in a coordinated and integrated manner. Historically, I would have applied the risk management standard as the umbrella framework, others do not.
Many of my OHS colleagues have responsibility for environmental safety, some to the extent of being rebadged HSE or OHSE. I have been an ardent advocate of managing business safety and risk issues in a coordinated and integrated manner. Historically, I would have applied the risk management standard as the umbrella framework, others do not.
The balancing act for health, safety & environment managers is to consider a vast array of matters without losing the focus of the core task, in my case workplace safety, for others this may be public liability, or triple-bottom-lines etc. Depending on the industry you work in, environment can have a greater or smaller role in your business.
I remember working on safety management for a transport company where I reported to the quality manager. I can report to lots of different titles but in this case the quality manager allocated an uneven priority to safety compared to other business elements. He saw quality as by-far the most important element, perhaps it was because he was uncomfortable in other areas outside of his expertise, I don’t really know. But his attitude did not allow for integration only sublimation. I remember his attitude when I have to consider elements beyond my expertise and have them fit into the business strategy in which I have responsibility for safety or maybe risk.
Time management and the prioritizing of tasks is never far away from occupational safety and business operations. It is important that environmental impacts of your business, and those on your business, are discussed in a serious manner at all levels of your company. If it is not on the agenda, it is not in people’s minds. Indeed some have said that the environment is the new OHS. I am not so sure as environmental issues have a global impact where OHS is limited to a smaller community.
In the context of community, an important consideration is whether the implementation of environmental strategies will re-organise business structures to the extent that there are staff losses. In a relatively small nation like Australia, if the environmental management trend continues to grow at the same time, the social impact from unemployment could be significant. However similar concerns have been voiced in recent memory over the level of automation in workplaces and the impact of automatic teller machines on the banking sector. In a fairly short amount of time, the workforce is redistributed to areas of need but for the unemployed and their families this short period can be very painful.
I was taught that risk management can be a major force for good by tying important business elements under the one, fairly broad, set of criteria. When I entered the real world of risk management I encountered as much narrow-mindedness in the risk management profession as I had seen elsewhere. I hope that as the environmental business issues gain prominence that the other disciplines listen, consider and, maybe, embrace the environmental so that all the important elements in our lives and our businesses are weighed, balanced and integrated. Work/life balance is far more than just hours of work and time with the kids.