H&S LeadershipMyth and Reality

Bud HudspithUnite H&S Adviser

The behaviour of theorganisation on

health and safety is more important than the

behaviour of individuals

H&S Leadership The way you lead your team on health and safety can determine how safe is your organisation• your attitudes and beliefs about health and safety drive your

behaviour; • your behaviour sends a powerful message to your workers

about how seriously they should take health and safety; and • the real causes of accidents can often be traced back to

managers’ decisions (From: Construction Industry’s Leadership and Worker Engagement Forum)

Living in the PastHeinrich’s Myths• Injuries the result of linear, single causation- FALSE• Fixed ratio between accidents minor injuries and major

injuries (Triangle) - FALSE• Worker unsafe acts are responsible for 88% of

industrial accidents - FALSEDekker, Sidney. “Foundations of Safety Science”

Human error: symptom not cause• Errors are shaped & provoked by upstream

workplace & organisational factors• The solutions to most problems are technical

rather than psychological!“You cannot change the human condition, but you can change the conditions under which humans work”

James Reason

Ditch the Myths• Human error is a choice• No events means no human error problems• Training will solve human error problems• Accountability/punishment will address human error• Experience eliminates human errors• Human errors are the root cause of accidents• Errors are violations, errors are bad

Human Error“Investigations that conclude that operator error was the sole cause are rarely acceptable. Underpinning the ‘human error’ there will be a number of underlying causes that created the environment in which human errors were inevitable.eg, inadequate training/supervision, poor equipment design, lack of management commitment, poor attitude to H&S.

Investigating accidents and incidents, HSE, HSG245

New SafetySafety Now• Workers are problem

to control• Tell them what to do

• Count success by absence of negatives

Safety Differently• Workers are the

solution• Ask them what they

need• Count positive

capacities

Workers are the solution, not the

problem!

Behavioural Safety

“… prehistoric thinking about people as a problem to control.”

Sidney Dekker, “Safety Differently: Human Factors for a New Era”, Second Edition 2014

Sharp End

Blunt End

Workers

Department Heads

Supervisors

Executives

Managers

Conklin/Howe

Human Factors not BS!!“Rather than expecting people to adapt to a design that forces them to work in an uncomfortable, stressful or dangerous way, ergonomists and human factors specialists seek to understand how a product, workplace or system can be designed to suit the people who need to use it.”

Chartered Institute of Ergonomics and Human Factors

“My employer doesn’t listen to me”

Involve the people doing the job,and their representatives

Talk and Listen to your workforce

Learning Teams

Work as Imaginedvs

Work as Done

Did you follow the procedure?• “We didn’t have the right equipment”• “We haven’t done it that way for years”• “We didn’t have time”• “We lacked sufficient manpower”• “We thought we could skip a few steps to get the

work out and still be safe”• “The procedure didn’t cover it”

Safe Systems of WorkDo they protect the workforce . . . . . . or the organisation?

Workers are the solution, not the problem

Talk, Listen and Lead!