KEY POINTS:
At work, safety comes first. Or that's what we hope. In reality, safety is more on a sliding scale with productivity, says workplace expert Professor Rhona Flin from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland.
On a visit to Auckland, Flin said that safety is largely dependant on how management has set up the organisation's internal culture.
"If there's more rewards for keeping the plant running or meeting a production target then that's likely to dominate. Of course businesses have to tolerate some level of risk."
For 86 people last year, that risk cost them their lives. Although that's down from 94 people in 2004, injured workers still cost the country $196 million in treatment, compensation and rehabilitation costs.
When there's a conflict between production and safety, Flin says managers need to make sure safety retains a high profile against production.
"Managers need to make sure that safety maintains a high visibility in the organisation and that's a management responsibility for that to happen."
Aviation has long been the gold standard of industry safety. When there's a crash, everyone knows about it and everyone wants to know why. It has resulted in some stringent safety procedures. But some offshore industries actually operate with a zero-tolerance policy towards risk.
For instance, nuclear power plant operators are trained in conservative decision making so that they err on the side of caution if there is any suggestion of risk. On some offshore oil drilling rigs, anyone on the drill floor, no matter how junior, can call for a timeout and stop the drilling. The idea of giving everyone the power to stop the task, even if the power is never used, illustrates the importance an organisation is placing on safety.
But for most small businesses in particular, the safety issue simply hits real world economics.
"I think it's probably the same in most countries ... that these small businesses particularly around agriculture and construction are problematic in terms of the accident rates,"ays Flin. "The difficulties is for the regulators monitoring them. They're still busy trying to keep their businesses afloat and that's taking the priority."
In fact, many small businesses don't know they have a safety issue until someone gets hurt. Flin says owners and managers need to set up a culture where safe behaviour in encouraged. Middle managers should have certain basic skills in order to manage safety. They should not only have the basic technical skills to understand safety in their particular work setting, they should have risk awareness, safety procedures and an ability to do accident analysis. They should also have attention to risk, decision making skills and team management skills. But Flin says these are all skills which already make for good managers anyway.
Other characteristics which may prove successful in business might prove disastrous to safety. An entrepreneur or small business owner might have a bold, can-do attitude. This is great for pushing on and getting the job done as long as safety limits are recognised, Flin says. New workers coming on site will also be taking their safety cues from their new colleagues. But just what the normal behaviours are and how safe they are is something which can actually be measured.
Flin has used the questionnaire method to determine how safe people perceive their workplace to be, what the obstacles are, how proactive managers appear to be toward safety and how seriously the rules are being enforced. Flin says some organisations have a rule breaking culture and the reason is not always a simple answer.
"There may be circumstances where people are breaking the rules because that's the only way they can get the task done."
For workers to follow the rules, they have to know about the rules in the first place. Then, Flin says they must believe the rules make good sense, provide the safest way of working and are being followed by managers. She says safety and performance don't always have to be diametrically opposed to each other.
"In the longer time frame one could argue that taking care of safety should produce production benefits because you have less downtime, less maintenance, re-work etc. When things go wrong it can be expensive. But in the short-term, those short-term goals may dominate."
With ingrained systemic practices which are unsafe, Flin says it can take quite a long time to change things around.
"The culture may have some features in terms of whether risk taking and rule breaking are condoned by supervisors and managers under certain circumstances."
It may require regulatory pressure, a commitment from senior managers, a diagnosis of why people are breaking the rules and an analysis of what is reinforcing the behaviour.
"Many people may think that it is rewarding to come off shift and not have had anything go wrong. But it's not as inherently rewarding as some of the other motivators. It's debatable whether safety should be rewarded or not."
Flin is cautious about rewarding good safety practices in a way which might create a diversion. For instance, the oil sector used to provide tangible rewards for maintaining high safety records but human nature curtailed that programme.
"It may reduce the number of incidence you're getting reported if there are high incentives like gold Rolex watches for not having any incidence."
Flin says some companies now give donations to charity based on a good safety record instead of the tempting personal rewards. But there are more often rewards for neglecting safety in terms of output, speed or efficiencies.
"Human's tend to be motivated by various kinds of re-enforcers or rewards and in many workplace settings the rewards are salient for the production, getting work done, meeting targets, driving down waiting lists if it's in healthcare and keeping the plant running. There's usually quite obvious reward mechanisms on the productivity side which produces quite a strong incentive base for people to target their behaviour in that direction."
In New Zealand the most unsafe industry is mining followed by agriculture, forestry and fishing. According to Statistics New Zealand, miners had 198 injuries per 1000 full-time equivalent hours last year. That compares with 190 for agriculture, forestry and fishing and 22 injuries for the finance and insurance industries. But whether or not on-site managers or supervisors make safety a priority may always rely somewhat on the commercial reality.
"I suspect they [employers] may actually be fairly well aware of what the risks are and then continue to run them because they've got other motivations. I suppose the bigger question has to be what the regulatory authorities are doing to protect workers in these sectors."
