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In my current role I am fortunate to experience many different approaches to health and safety in the workplace. I have seen many of the clever little tools that most of us rely on to meet our obligations under the act, electronic sign in, electronic forms for TA’s, JSA’s, SWMS and everything else in between.
So, despite the ever-increasing proliferation of various HS&E platforms, predominantly computer-based software applications, which are developed and rolled out by a number of organisations, in order to speed up our HS&E tasks and ultimately meet our obligations under the act, we are not seeing any significant decrease in construction related deaths.
So, what are these systems there for?
- To allow us to comply with our obligations – “yes”
- To speed up the process of documentation – “yes”
- To allow subbies to be able to provide legible documentation to main contractors – “yes”
- To be able to pull information together when something goes wrong to defend a prosecution – “yes”
- To raise the awareness of the hazards that exist in the workplace so that workers can collectively understand the issue, discuss and collectively manage the risk – quite simply “no”.
So here we are with what appears to be a “dumbing” down of the very people who are most at risk of injury or death because we look to tick the compliance box and not continue to look to change the culture of our workplace.
The days of that one person who went out of their way to break the rules are gone, we don’t tolerate it anymore. We have matured as an industry to a certain extent, we realise that it isn’t good business to work without any consideration for safety but sadly, we have taken the most important aspect of site safety away from our people, the opportunity to find solutions to problems as a team, manage risk together by discussing the issues. I am not a digger operator so how can I fill out a task analysis on the safe operation of an excavator on my app? Why wouldn’t I approach the operator and his spotter for their expert advice and input into the risk assessment (therefore making them part of the solution and ultimately obtaining their buy in) as opposed to me making it up so that I can file it away in case something goes wrong?
We should all embrace technology, it’s all around us and becoming part of our lives now more than ever but let’s not lose sight of its limitations. There have been many occasions where I have looked to undertake a task in a different way but most of the time I am limited to my own understanding of things, therefore I need to engage with others to truly understand what I am trying to solve and what the best solution might be.
So, before you hand out the next scripted toolbox meeting, task analysis or JSA, take time to ask yourself these few questions, “Why am I undertaking this task of analysing and managing this risk alone? Who is it going to benefit the most, me or my workmates and their families? How can I engage with others so that people know I care about their wellbeing and how do I foster an inclusive site safety culture? Maybe I could just ask them.”
Steve Taw, Charter Board Member
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