Good morning,
MINDMELD: WHAT’S ON THE MINDS OF PROS THIS MORNING?
One pro who recently changed jobs wonders:
How has the uneasiness of the economy impacted EHS (postively or negatively)?
Do you find workload increasing with low hiring?
What leading initiatives are you looking to implement in 2011?
Are injury rates and/or # of injuries increasing with your company?
What about EHS work keeps pros up at night?
How to demonstrate the full value of the EHS profession to employers to keep driving improvements during a tough economic time.
The impact of the economy on worker safety & health.
How to manage in a larger role with fewer resources (i.e. low hiring).
How do we feel about our jobs at this point?
What's the state of the job market?
JOB MARKET
One pro emails us: “Feeling pretty secure in current position. Although, wonder about potential of a double-dip recession, and how that would impact.
”Job market for EHS pros, that I have seen, seems to be opening recently, likely because companies are seeing a potential for cost-savings by reducing injuries ... and also potential result of increased regulatory enforcement (possible)."
LET’S MAKE THE MORNING ROUNDS OF SOCIAL MEDIA SITES
Here’s what professional discussion groups are talking about this morning:
RISK MANAGEMENT SPECIALTY GROUP (ASSE)
The QUESTION: "I would like opinions on the control of items entered into company safety manuals. Is it normally seen as a safety professional document or is it open for all departments to recommend and approve content?
“I am not asking from a legal or liability perspective. My question deals more about what is appropriate to include and who normally controls the input. I know it is not supposed to be draconian, but should the SH&E Professional/Department have the ‘final say’ over what is included in the manual?"
LINKEDIN GREEN DISCUSSION GROUP
QUESTION: What is the one thing every single human being on the planet can do that's considered GREEN?
This simple query received more than 1,200 COMMENTS!
Including: “Drink water from the tap!”
"To promote a living in harmony with Nature / a Sustainable Development oriented state of mind".
LINKEDIN SOCIETY OF CORPORATE COMPLIANCE AND ETHICS
Topic of discussion: “Matters of judgment can be taught, starting with lead (mis)bhevarior.”
ENVIRONMENTAL HEALHT & SAFETY PROFESSIONALS (10,000 members+)
“SAFETY CHALLENGE? - I would like to hear from anyone on what they think is the greatest challenge that we face - in keeping our Employees Safe in the today's current workplace.”
83 comments received, including:
One response: “The Effects of Radical Downsizing on Worker Safety. In my research I discovered a fairly high level of consensus that the greatest threat to worker safety in this recession is stress related accidents, injuries, and illnesses. Most have seen a spike in injuries caused by distracted workers, and some experts are predicting that we will see a serious issue involving Post Traumatic Stress Disorders among workers still on the job, but who have worked under the threat of layoff for so long that they are ready to snap. “
Second response: “I've found that the economic slowdown has had the opposite effect: my employees pay more attention to what is needed to keep their jobs. The old poster used to say: ‘New incentive plan: work or get fired’ and it applies to safety compliance as well. We have let some people go for violating serious safety policy and everyone knows that. One of my major customers is just as zealous, and will refuse entry to a vendor employee who breaks their rules. This could end that employee's career in our industry.”
Third response: “I believe cost is the greatest challenge, H&S is perceived as expensive and there are many myths surrounding it. Most people think if we keep our heads down and we don’t get a visit then we are doing OK, this will inevitably result one day in someone getting hurt, there’s never a dull day there!!!”
Fourth response: “Simply put - Employee safety as it relates to behavior. Minding/closing the gap in knowledge versus application or expected behavior.”
SAFETY TRAINING GROUP (LINKEDIN)
QUESTION: What safety leadership strategies have you adopted in your company, and how do you know if they are effective?
From Dominic Cooper: “The background for starting the debate is that
[a] in 1988 Blackspot Construction (a British HSE Doc) the 'root causes' of 70% of incidents were firmly placed at managements door;
[b] During the 1990's, James Reason at Manchester University(UK) showed that Executive level decision-making and line-management implementation were involved in many major disasters (aka the 'Swiss Cheese' model);
[c] Modern Safety Culture approaches (via Maturity Models, Culture Change processes, etc) emphasize the 'supreme' importance of safety leadership;
[d] Managerial commitment to safety has been emphasized throughout the history of the 'safety discipline. Given this background, it would seem sensible for ‘Safety Leadership' strategies to be high on the 'Safety professionals' agenda, when implementing HSE systems, improvement initiatives, etc.
“I recently posted the above question on safety leadership strategies and their effectiveness on 30+ forums, comprising some 107,000 potential respondents. Of the responses received to date, Safety Leadership was defined by one respondent as "The process of defining the desired state, setting up the team to succeed, and engaging in the discretionary efforts that drive the safety value," which broadly boils down to "engaging in and maintaining behaviors that help others achieve our safety goals." ”The COMMON SAFETY LEADERSHIP STRATEGIES appear to be:
[1] Encouraging people to take personal responsibility for safety by setting expectations for each layer (Senior, Middle, Front-line management, and employees) linked to clear goals. These should be created at a dedicated session where the CEO outlines his/her vision and senior managers determine how to translate that into concrete actions. It is important to ensure the strategies and interventions adopted are aligned to their strategic intent and do not just boil down to a simple signing of the safety policy. A reinforcement strategy is for all board members to hold a weekly conference call where plant managers are required to discuss incidents occurring in the previous week, root cause analysis results, corrective actions, best practices, etc. At plant/operation levels, morning meetings should be held to discuss any and all pressing safety issues. Effectiveness assessments are held with 360 reviews of managers, an organizational wide safety climate survey and further diagnostics around organizational systems.
[2] Putting a robust Risk or Safety management system in place encompassing (but not limited to) preventive maintenance, operation procedures, inspections, permit to work systems, safety talks, Safety committees, risk assessments, near miss reporting, training, management of change, risk management plans, etc. In terms of effectiveness, the monitoring focus is primarily on incident rates (lagging indicators), safety surveys, and Gap Analyses via Internal Audit functions (leading Indicators).
[3] Education & Awareness: Providing safety leadership training so that safety leadership becomes a corporate value. Effectiveness assessment of the training strategy revolves around employees visibly observing the leadership commitment to a safe workplace, and leaders in the organization being more knowledgeable on safety with line management accepting safety responsibilities. However, a comment was made that realistically education is not effective for more than a few days post course. This implies that some type of monitoring system is required to ensure attendees are held accountable for demonstrating the behaviors taught (leading Indicator).
[4] Encouraging the management team (from the most senior down) to exhibit visible leadership commitment to a safe workplace. This visible demonstration appears to take the form of chairing of safety meetings, ownership of the SMS (i.e. conducting risk assessments, investigating accidents), involvement in quarterly reviews & training, two-way dialogues about safety, going around site, looking around and talking with people. Effectiveness is assessed by monitoring the number and quality of managerial observations / conversations (leading Indicator). Again, this implies that some type of robust, but easily accessible tracking system is required to monitor the outcomes of the observations and discussions.:
Monday, August 30, 2010
Dave Johnson’s Safety Beat – Knee-jerk safety reactions; young pros withhold their trust; do companies really care?
Good morning,
As we head down the homestretch of summer…
KNEE-JERK SAFETY REACTIONS
From the discussion group EHSQ Elite:
The Question: “There's got to be some pretty entertaining ‘mistakes’ we humans have made with the best intentions of making it safer. These we can file under the ‘FAILED’ folder. My personal favorite was a knee jerk reaction to a fatal train derailment caused by snow build up on the track...one senior manager sent out a comany wide memo making it a new rule that EVERY train had to have someone WALK the track in front of the train anytime we had an INCH or more of snow on the track! File this under FAILED!
Another response: “Unfortunately most Safety Professionals have similiar stories. I worked for a Manager who utilized temporary labor for tasks where exposure to carcinogens occurred. In his mind it was cheaper than installing engineering controls. He was promoted several times because his facility was very profitable. This Manager eventually was removed from his position for other unrelated unacceptable behavior, but only after years of intentionally putting people at risk. “
THE TRUST GAP WITH YOUNG PROFESSIONALS
From the discussion group Safety Training on LinkdedIn
“Almost one in three young professionals do not trust their employer, according to the latest research from recruitment consultants Badenoch & Clark.
“When asked whether they trust their employer to deliver accurate information on business performance, 32.2 per cent of 16 – 24 yr olds revealed that they refuse to believe either ‘most’ or ‘any’ of what they are told by their employer. This is in contrast to 18.2 per cent last year, suggesting that Generation Y is becoming increasingly disillusioned with the workplace.
“Guy Emmerson, Associate Director of Badenoch & Clark commented, ‘Without a culture of trust in the workplace, employers will struggle to foster employee engagement and, in-turn, retain their workforce.
“’As recruitment activity levels pick up, employers need to consider the strength of their relationship with employees across all levels of the business, or run the risk of staff voting with their feet.
“’Younger employees – the so-called Generation Y – have specific expectations of their employers, so encouraging more two-way conversations on business performance will prove vital to increasing levels of trust and gauging job satisfaction. Without this it will be become harder to obtain any kind of staff loyalty and in-turn retain talented graduates.”
“Those in the legal profession were particularly skeptical of their employers, with 36.9 per cent of employees across all age ranges stating that they do not believe either ‘most’ or ‘any’ of what their employers tells them about business performance.
A further 26.3 per cent admitted to only trusting ‘parts’ of what their employer tells them and only one in ten (10.5 per cent) stated that they ‘totally trust’ their employer.
By comparison, only 5.9 per cent of HR professionals distrust their employers and almost a quarter of sales and marketing (23.3 per cent) and administration and clerical professionals (23.2) totally trust their employers.
“Mr Emmerson continued, ‘This research highlights the detrimental impact the recession has had on the workforce, not just in terms of job losses and pay freezes, but in terms of the relationship between employer and employee. Now is the time to start repairing this relationship and being more honest and open with employees about business performance.’”
DO COMPANIES ACTUALLY CARE?
67 percent of corporate sustainability professionals who responded to an Ethical Corporation survey said their company "measures social and/or economic impact of their business on the communities where they operate" (n=116).
This positive response surprised 100 corporate sustainability professionals who turned up in London for a debate where Ethical Corporation shared its preliminary results for an upcoming report on "Social and economic impact: measurement, evaluation and reporting."
Companies are beginning to realize that corporate sustainability is about more than being green, despite a hazy understanding of exactly how social and economic impact studies benefit their business.
Ethical Corporation's report presents four distinct impact models, explaining the business reasons for conducting studies and exactly how the studies benefit their bottom line.
Supply chain management - The continuing propensity of labour rights campaigns against some well-known companies such as Nike, Gap and Primark has meant that ethical management of the supply chain has become fairly wide-spread practice.
External reporting standards - Companies now seek to meet industry benchmarks and guidelines offered by voluntary initiatives. These initiatives are increasingly demanding measurement beyond performance, so that companies can monitor actual societal impacts and the root cause of community challenges.
Site-level community impact - Increasingly, companies with a strong physical presence and reliance on a local community are implementing processes to understand and manage the site/ community impacts.
Socio-economic impact assessment - A small number of companies are beginning much more systematically to understand how their activities impact on the overall development trajectory of the countries where they operate. Findings inform corporate strategy, and result in outcomes such as innovation of new, sustainable products that respond to a local market demand.
This final approach is still in its infancy, and is posing challenges in terms both of attribution of impact, and in developing relationships with new partners. Nonetheless, this approach is a highly significant development not just in terms of the 'technology' of assessing impacts on society, but also in how companies see their very role within society.
Another challenge, especially for health and safety pros: in the majority of organizations touting their sustainability programs, employee safety and health is largely absent from the conversation.
How can a company be sustainable with sustaining a safe and healthy workforce?
As we head down the homestretch of summer…
KNEE-JERK SAFETY REACTIONS
From the discussion group EHSQ Elite:
The Question: “There's got to be some pretty entertaining ‘mistakes’ we humans have made with the best intentions of making it safer. These we can file under the ‘FAILED’ folder. My personal favorite was a knee jerk reaction to a fatal train derailment caused by snow build up on the track...one senior manager sent out a comany wide memo making it a new rule that EVERY train had to have someone WALK the track in front of the train anytime we had an INCH or more of snow on the track! File this under FAILED!
Another response: “Unfortunately most Safety Professionals have similiar stories. I worked for a Manager who utilized temporary labor for tasks where exposure to carcinogens occurred. In his mind it was cheaper than installing engineering controls. He was promoted several times because his facility was very profitable. This Manager eventually was removed from his position for other unrelated unacceptable behavior, but only after years of intentionally putting people at risk. “
THE TRUST GAP WITH YOUNG PROFESSIONALS
From the discussion group Safety Training on LinkdedIn
“Almost one in three young professionals do not trust their employer, according to the latest research from recruitment consultants Badenoch & Clark.
“When asked whether they trust their employer to deliver accurate information on business performance, 32.2 per cent of 16 – 24 yr olds revealed that they refuse to believe either ‘most’ or ‘any’ of what they are told by their employer. This is in contrast to 18.2 per cent last year, suggesting that Generation Y is becoming increasingly disillusioned with the workplace.
“Guy Emmerson, Associate Director of Badenoch & Clark commented, ‘Without a culture of trust in the workplace, employers will struggle to foster employee engagement and, in-turn, retain their workforce.
“’As recruitment activity levels pick up, employers need to consider the strength of their relationship with employees across all levels of the business, or run the risk of staff voting with their feet.
“’Younger employees – the so-called Generation Y – have specific expectations of their employers, so encouraging more two-way conversations on business performance will prove vital to increasing levels of trust and gauging job satisfaction. Without this it will be become harder to obtain any kind of staff loyalty and in-turn retain talented graduates.”
“Those in the legal profession were particularly skeptical of their employers, with 36.9 per cent of employees across all age ranges stating that they do not believe either ‘most’ or ‘any’ of what their employers tells them about business performance.
A further 26.3 per cent admitted to only trusting ‘parts’ of what their employer tells them and only one in ten (10.5 per cent) stated that they ‘totally trust’ their employer.
By comparison, only 5.9 per cent of HR professionals distrust their employers and almost a quarter of sales and marketing (23.3 per cent) and administration and clerical professionals (23.2) totally trust their employers.
“Mr Emmerson continued, ‘This research highlights the detrimental impact the recession has had on the workforce, not just in terms of job losses and pay freezes, but in terms of the relationship between employer and employee. Now is the time to start repairing this relationship and being more honest and open with employees about business performance.’”
DO COMPANIES ACTUALLY CARE?
67 percent of corporate sustainability professionals who responded to an Ethical Corporation survey said their company "measures social and/or economic impact of their business on the communities where they operate" (n=116).
This positive response surprised 100 corporate sustainability professionals who turned up in London for a debate where Ethical Corporation shared its preliminary results for an upcoming report on "Social and economic impact: measurement, evaluation and reporting."
Companies are beginning to realize that corporate sustainability is about more than being green, despite a hazy understanding of exactly how social and economic impact studies benefit their business.
Ethical Corporation's report presents four distinct impact models, explaining the business reasons for conducting studies and exactly how the studies benefit their bottom line.
Supply chain management - The continuing propensity of labour rights campaigns against some well-known companies such as Nike, Gap and Primark has meant that ethical management of the supply chain has become fairly wide-spread practice.
External reporting standards - Companies now seek to meet industry benchmarks and guidelines offered by voluntary initiatives. These initiatives are increasingly demanding measurement beyond performance, so that companies can monitor actual societal impacts and the root cause of community challenges.
Site-level community impact - Increasingly, companies with a strong physical presence and reliance on a local community are implementing processes to understand and manage the site/ community impacts.
Socio-economic impact assessment - A small number of companies are beginning much more systematically to understand how their activities impact on the overall development trajectory of the countries where they operate. Findings inform corporate strategy, and result in outcomes such as innovation of new, sustainable products that respond to a local market demand.
This final approach is still in its infancy, and is posing challenges in terms both of attribution of impact, and in developing relationships with new partners. Nonetheless, this approach is a highly significant development not just in terms of the 'technology' of assessing impacts on society, but also in how companies see their very role within society.
Another challenge, especially for health and safety pros: in the majority of organizations touting their sustainability programs, employee safety and health is largely absent from the conversation.
How can a company be sustainable with sustaining a safe and healthy workforce?
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