Dear Editor

I am amazed at the SIA publishing the \’news\’ item by SACS Consulting promoting psychological screening out of workers who lack motivation in safety.

Back in the 1950s there was a similar push to improve safety by identifying \’accident prone\’ workers. This idea was so mainstream that Walt Disney made a cartoon on this which readers may wish to have a laugh at and can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2MzC4Ue0Zw .The focus is on the poor attention to safety of the worker, and never mind the multiple instances of unguarded machinery that he falls into that would have multiple prohibition notices applied by a modern regulator.

SACS uses a similar spiel, and interestingly focuses on the Health and Community Sector. It would be interesting how SACS would explain how a \’motivated\’ worker would be any safer if required to lift a bariatric patient if the hospital was understaffed and had not provided appropriate lifting equipment. Or how a \’motivated\’ ambulance officer or emergency nurse would be any safer dealing with an ice-crazed patient who threatened or actually acted out violence.

A very recent article in Safety Science (2014 (70), pp 211-221) describes a very large survey of safety issues within the Swedish health system. Interestingly, it identifies than many of the problems that cause both physical and psychological injury to the workers are organisation initiated (under-staffing, inappropriate reporting and computer systems, labour hire staff that are not fully cognisant of the hospital systems, etc), and it is actually the motivation and professionalism of the staff that holds it all together. However this inevitably has a toll of psychological burnout.

Such causation would not be news to an OHS professional who has understood this though the multiple writings of numerous authors in the past 20 years. The work of James Reason is probably the best known in dealing with the organisational causes of accidents.

It is both tragic and laughable that the idea of the accident prone worker, or similar, be raised again. Yet a reputable company is pushing exactly that theme. Kevin Jones has interviewed the representative of SACS and this is available in his SafetyAtWorkBlog. This is worth a read to understand where they are coming from. (http://safetyatworkblog.com/2014/09/).

The world is more complex than Walt Disney or SACS would have us believe, and the causation of accidents is more complex that simply focusing on \’unmotivated\’ workers. Employers have a legislated responsibility to provide a safe workplace, not push back the responsibility to cope with an unsafe workplace onto a \’motivated\’ worker.

regards

Leo Ruschena​ CFSIA​
Senior Lecturer – OHS
School of Applied Science

Today’s work structure generates significant movement of people; and this is particularly evident in the Construction Industry. Safety expectations and rules very often differ from project to project: from leading edge (the highest priority of the client such that the project MUST assure safety as a condition of obtaining full payment for work done) to laissez-faire, with virtually no leadership, allowing for the Australian “she’ll be right mate” approach; and enabling personnel to make statements such as “what are you, a wimp?” that ‘shames’ many others to conform to poor safety practices within the team in which they work.
Thus, for construction personnel who move from project to project where they see OH&S inconsistently applied, it is no wonder they often have a less than perfect attitude to OH&S.

It is a well understood that cultural change takes significantly greater time than legislative (rule) change. Thus, my view is that what is considered poor attitudes is very often a result of changed expectations not being accepted by people until it is seen as the “new norm”; it is the new culture. It is therefore incumbent upon:
– All businesses and teams to consistently assure strong OH&S leadership in accord with current ethical, legislative and legal expectations.
– Clients to draft project management contracts appropriately to drive OH&S conformity with current expectations.
This will, over time, help assure appropriate consistent attitudes to OH&S.

I don\’t believe this statement of Mr Marty\’s is consistent with Australian W/OHS legislation which calls for assessing and controlling/reducing risks in the workplace. It makes no reference to assessing the risk inherent in particular workers.

I also know that you can stack the sample to provide the result you want which is why I agree with Les that 1400 responses are woefully inadequate to provide any realistic and meaningful data to support a position.

David, I agree that the behaviouralists have the upper-hand by having the ear of the \”c-suite\” but part of the prominence is that the engineeringists(?) have failed to continue to argue their case over the last few decades and have allowed the behaviouralists an opportunity. Part of this is due to the traditional split between the OHS and HR professions encouraged by parallel developments in concepts and language.

Humans may be \”reliably unreliable\” but I have seen first-hand some remarkable turnarounds in safety performance through introducing and maintaining a collaborative values-based approach to safety but such an approach still requires evidence to verify this approach.