Health and safety doesn’t have to be complex

It’s fair to say there’s a lot of nervousness around the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 coming in effect on April 4; fear of complexity, cost of compliance and personal and commercial liability. 

The reality is that it doesn’t have to be complex or costly. And liability has always been there, it’s just the nature of it that has changed. 

There are two key things that you need to do under the new Act: to understand what your critical health and safety risks are and how they’re being managed. 

And secondly, you need to involve everyone; you need worker participation (including your contractors).  And that’s good for business.

Creating an enduring safety climate requires a cultural shift that is almost impossible to regulate. It’s about moving from ‘Safety 1.0’ – regulatory alignment, compliance, good procedures, health and safety training and audits, into the next stage of ‘Safety 2.0’ – energising change by engaging with and empowering your workers to own problem identification and solution creation; along with people-focused leadership.

Where do you start on that journey in the context of our regulatory environment? The Act places a far more proactive duty on directors/executives to understand hazards and risks, what’s being done to control them and deliver evidence that it’s working. 

But it’s important that you’re finding and fixing the right things rather than implementing police-style investigations that not only embed a fear and blame culture but take a lot of time and often result in ineffective outcomes.

At Contact, we’ve made the shift over the past 18 months from a rules-focused, blame culture to a people-focused approach.

One of our greatest successes has been replacing our investigations with learning teams – where a diverse group of workers come together quickly after an incident to understand what conditions were present, what went wrong and what learnings and actions will improve our defences.  Leaders now support as opposed to seeking immediate answers. 

Learning teams are not just about failures – it’s easy with hindsight to see where something went wrong. They also look at where things are successful; looking at what might impede safe work in the future. 

We’ve done a lot of micro-experimentation, getting out and finding that the solutions to better safety are coming from our sharp-end workers. 

And it’s reaping rewards. We’ve continued to see a reduction in injury rates (a 55% improvement during our last financial year), we’ve reduced 60+ safety documents on one part of our operations down to one, and our people are telling us that safety is important and things are getting better.

But numbers are only part of the story. What a learning approach does is flip from a culture where people feel wary of reporting incidents because “failure is bad” to one where it’s welcomed as an opportunity to learn and improve.

As leaders we determine strategy, we influence funding, we influence what's important and what are priorities for the company. That shapes our workers’ environment strongly but we can't understand the risks and hazards and how well we are controlling them if we just look at data on a bit of paper in the boardroom.

Data is only part of the picture. It needs to be backed up by getting out in the business – not a "royal visit", but talking to workers on the job. Ask them stuff about what they're doing: are they tired? Are we doing anything unhelpful as leaders? Do they have what they need to do the job? Can we simplify things?

Some directors are wary of getting too far into the business – a valid concern because as a director you don't want look like you're interfering in the management of a business. But you need a culture of curiosity; you can't understand the risks and controls without talking to people and hearing their stories. 

So the questions directors should be asking of us as managers and leaders are:

1. What are your most critical risks and hazards?

2. What are you doing to control them?

3. How do you know the controls are effective?

If the answer to number one is that there are really no major risks or hazards, I’d be concerned. And if the answers to the next two questions are vague – I’d be even more worried. 

This is about the future of your business – and it’s much broader than simply health and safety, it’s about culture and relationships. If you have a sense that there are fractious relationships between leadership and sharp-end workers – I’d be concerned. Indeed if you’re getting any level of resistance to the "hard" questions – keep going, because you’re probably on to something.

And get creative, use humour to engage with your internal communications messaging on safety.

So for those feeling terrified, understand that it does not have to be complicated or costly; the simpler the better. Think big but start small. Micro-experiment and you’ll be surprised by the effectiveness.

Learning teams don’t cost. Changing language doesn’t cost. Being visible doesn’t cost. Focus on leadership not management.

It’s OK to experiment, it’s important to learn and adapt, and it’s critical to involve everyone.

Tania Palmer is the general manager health safety and environment at Contact energy

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