OPINION By Craig Carlyle, certified machinery safety expert (TÜV Nord)
Do we need another reset in our approach to improving our health and safety? If you look at our hellish traffic management approach, as a perfect example, it is a resounding ‘yes’. And WorkSafe have got something to do with it.
Road traffic safety is the high-profile example of the lunacy, with a whole new industry where previously none existed; stop go, road cones, full road closures, unending delays and frustrations for the public, and comedic approaches to weeding roundabouts. All in the name of health and safety. So, are we killing and injuring any less road workers? Nope, about the same as previous decades. Are we paying through the nose for these extra resources and delays? Yes.
So how did we end up in this mess? We can trace it back to WorkSafe’s penchant for prosecuting the PCBU’s and directors. WorkSafe are the inspectorate, so like the police, their job is to apply the laws and regulations. Rightly or wrongly, they have zealously pursued the top of the food chain, convinced that this will force change. It certainly has. But not the right kind of change. In fact, it is a spectacular failure.
Refer traffic management. Pressure from the top down after several high-profile road work fatality prosecutions has cascaded down to the illogical and over the top results we observe daily. Instead of upwardly driven logic, we are back to cover your arse, tick the box clerical safety and health and safety fashion. The costs are accepted and passed up the chain, (eventually to us), by the players, who are clipping the ticket along the way and not about to bite the hand feeding them. While it is un-PC to deny the safety card, (how dare you!), the public can clearly see the emperor is wearing fluro clothes.
Road construction is not unique, but it is a high-profile example of where we are going wrong. If all this cost and constraint since 1992 was even slightly effective, we should be experiencing a paradigm shift in our statistics. But we are not. All we have learnt is what does not work. Returning to WorkSafe, they need to think about two core approaches, who they are focusing on and the balance between the carrot and stick.
The recent prosecution of a worker (a fishing charter Captain) was so rare it deserves mention. Workers have distinct duties under the laws and regulations, but they seldom feature in prosecutions. More focus on workers may help drive the message that we are responsible for ourselves and our mates, as opposed to safety being a management ‘thing’. When was the last time a WorkSafe investigation focused on the victim’s peers and their actions or inactions? We are living the result of aiming at the top of the totem pole.
Business’s feel trapped by the current regime. In 2015, WorkSafe were charged with providing both carrot and stick and did a pretty good job of making information available on their website. But while WorkSafe are very good at telling business’s what they have done wrong after an event, business’s ability to tap into the same advice and opinion proactively is problematic. The WorkSafe line is that they are “not here to consult”. Meanwhile, the current approach of a WorkSafe inspector knocking at the door and then leaving a stack of punitive improvement notices behind does not induce confidence and trust from industry.
Yes, we can do better. But we need to change something first. The first step is to recognise what we are doing is not working.