By Craig Carlyle, certified machinery safety expert (TÜV Nord), HasTrak
As passionate as health and safety managers may be in their role, keeping workers engaged in health and safety in the long term is an onerous task requiring skill sets and techniques that are not learnt in the classroom. A recent conversation with an industry peer centred around the difficulty of keeping small business and franchise owners focused on health and safety.
Sure, it should be fundamentally obvious that health and safety is a core function of the business viability, but the reality is different for some. Thinking you can change that reality by creating rules and imposing penalties to change human behaviour is misguided enthusiasm.
Three similar but separately unique workplaces are departmental work groups, small branch operations and micro businesses. Each of these have different management structures and require a different understanding of the working reality and the management tools required to assure compliance. Don’t wait until WorkSafe investigates to admit that you have got it wrong.
For micro business owner operator personalities, the health and safety managers Teutonic go-to of quoting rules and regulations verbatim and fear-based rules, penalties and horrific accident photos are like water off a ducks’ back. Even when provided with online and mobile tools, the hardy annual excuses for non-performance are easily rolled out (fat fingers, too busy, negative H&S PR etc). In these situations, waving CYA (cover your backside) pieces of paper will not elicit change. These operators do it tough in a world where you must justify every action and cost.
A head in the sand attitude easily prevails and it takes an experienced health and safety advisor to disentangle the H&S bs to allay ingrained resistance and fear. You must focus on keeping health and safety a simple and natural component of running the business, like paying wages and sending invoices. I have adopted sneakier man management tools such as asking the owners partner how the household would cope with a dead worker or a $300k-okus fine.
Instant attitude adjustment.
Reframing your approach into how to keep the worker alive and what tools he/she needs to stay alive is your best opportunity to reset the individual’s approach to the topic. We start our training with a body bag. Amazing what happens when we take it personally.
For small branch operations (such as retail/franchise chains), the management solution is about structuring your reporting base into manageable segments, ensuring transparent management through Cloud based systems and then committing to a cycle of measure, report, communicate, feedback, shoe leather, rinse, and repeat.
Sadly, there is no golden bullet, but start with getting alongside the workers to recalibrate your approach. We took the opportunity with a well-known national brand to explore the differences between the “good” and the “bad” branches. What we found was the “good” operators accepted that h&s was simply a part of the business, so you may as well get good at it. This epiphany was translated into the “make it simple” philosophy we have trained and espoused for the last 20 years. It has certainly helped us help our clients.