Getting Health & Safety Governance Right - Part 1

Written by Liz Nicol, Principal Consultant 

“Not everything that counts can be measured and not everything that can be counted counts” Albert Einstein

This year marks my 30th year working in the field of safety and wellbeing and my 20^th year in consulting. As you can imagine, in that time I have seen many, many changes and observed some impressive improvements in safety and wellbeing. We know that as we go forward there is opportunity for much more to be done so people are able to live the life they choose – a life that is not impacted by workplace injury or ill health. Reflecting on my time in practice, there have been two absolute constants in terms of what makes a difference: genuine commitment and actions of leaders; and deep engagement with, and involvement of the workforce. 

Working as both a safety professional and a non-executive director on Boards, I am often asked how companies set up safety and wellbeing governance that focuses on leadership and employee engagement. How do we set up leadership to be enabled to demonstrate genuine commitment and sound decision making? While there are clear legislative responsibilities in relation to Work Health and Safety,  getting the balance right can be quite difficult and something many organisations struggle with.

I remember a number of years ago, having a conversation with a leadership group who were reeling from a significant event on their site. They had been diligently watching their LTIFR fall, regularly celebrating reduction in injuries, when the news came of a serious injury to one of their workers. While operating a pendant crane, the worker had been struck in the head by a scrap metal projectile from a nearby furnace. The worker received some very serious injuries, however thankfully a hardhat and sheer luck prevented fatal injuries.  

The shocked Board and leadership team questioned how they could have predicted this?

How could they have known that an event of this potential magnitude could have occurred? In attempting to understand this – they took a walk around the plant. What they saw was the holes around the walls from previous occurrences of scrap being ejected from the furnace. What they heard people talking about, was the regularity of these occurrences, and how there had been many near hits of this nature in the past. Yet, at the Executive and Board level, this information had not reached their attention. There was no data being presented on critical risks and controls and limited information of High Potential Events.

In a more recent conversation – with a highly safety mature organisation – the executive team discussed the struggles they were having in discerning the critical issues in the complexity of information being reported to them. At their executive meeting, they were provided with details on over 90 High Potential Events.  With so much detail, the group were only skimming the information, failing to adequately identify the trends or critical issues.  Were they potential fatalities indicating an out of control problem? Or minor issues wrongly coded? In this case, they found significant inconsistencies in categorising and reporting, and many of the occurrences did not meet the criteria of a ‘high probability of significant injury or death’. While all incidents were critical for the organisation to manage, the way the information was presented made it extremely difficult to prioritise and discern the critical issues.

We know Executives and Boards have a huge range of information and data to review every day, and are constantly required to make significant decisions across all aspects of business management. If they are to successfully undertake their role in leading safety and wellbeing, it is critical executives and boards get the right information, at the right time with sufficient critical analysis to set them up for success. 

Current Work Health and Safety (WHS) Due Diligence legislative requirements of Officers, plus the commencement  of Industrial Manslaughter legislation in some parts of Australia, means there is an absolute responsibility on Boards and Executives to have clear knowledge of the WHS risks in their organisation and ensure that these are being adequately controlled and managed. While Due diligence is about our legislative responsibilities we know that we need to think more broadly about what is it that we are really trying to achieve. Ultimately, we must be focussed on stopping people from being hurt and not impacting people in a way that affects their wellbeing.   

If we consider this from a behavioural perspective – people do what they do, because of what happens to them when they do it – or at least their perception of what will happen to them. People in all workplaces look for signs and symbols of the organisation’s commitment to safety and wellbeing. The Board and Executive have a key role in setting the tone from the top.  If we are going to effectively set up our leaders for success, we need them to be aware of and influencing all of these areas – either directly or indirectly, we need our leaders to know what impacts people’s perceptions and what their role is in influencing this.

The reality is that an organisation can have the best reporting in the world, but it is the conversations around the information that will have the most impact on the safety performance of the organisation.

The tone at the top of an organisation is critical because workers perceptions of the organisation, and therefore their level of engagement and discretionary effort is based on their personal experiences of safety and wellbeing in the organisation. The types of policies and procedures, the routines they are subjected to, their involvement in their development of them, the behaviours and events they observe being punished, rewarded or supported, all impact the decisions people make about safety and wellbeing every day.

If we are realistically going to set up our Boards and leaders for success – they need to be provided with good quality, critically analysed data which allows for effective interrogation of the information and sound decision making. However, just as important, there is a need to create the environment for the right conversations, with the right people at the right time.

Over the next few issues of our Governance series, we will explore in detail the elements of both good quality Board and Executive reporting including strategies for analysing and responding, as well as creating environments for quality conversations and achieving improvements in Safety and Wellbeing Governance Maturity.

Until then, stay safe and well…..