Notes

WHS TOPICS WE RARELY SPEAK ABOUT

WHS professionals pursue lots of common goals and comply with similar guidelines. Whether you are an entrepreneur, a PCBU, a Location Safety Officer, or part of my Occupational Safety Solutions team, we have specific topics we often deal with, along with things we rarely discuss. It's those underlying things that I want to focus on today.

Regretfully, my dad passed three weeks ago, and beyond the sorrow and sorrow, his death has me believing outside packages we generally live in. He was a good man, and I would've liked him to have had more time to buy my young boys and myself, but that's not how it played out. He had a long innings, and he batted with tactical singles, notable borders and even had actually some "smacked out of the premises for 6" minutes. But death, and particularly his death, has got me thinking of much deeper issues.

We reside in complex and extremely misleading times. In the midst of this, the concerns being put on companies are increasing, not only requiring more of our resources however also progressively requiring compliance to structures of thinking we and our workers might not constantly agree with. We're being forced off the well-worn courses, tracks and routes we're used to, and onto side-roads and goat trails and into uncertain surface.

Do you understand any of these sentiments? Do you as a busy person, as I do, wrestle with balancing work, personnel, family and friends? Do you also discover it hard at times to think beyond the apparent and the basics? If so, and you also find these to be tough days, I thought I 'd offer a few insights from my off-the-beaten-track thinking. I hope they help!

3 METHODS OF DESCRIBING WHS
The WHS role can be explained clearly, drastically or with street-level bluntness:

Mentioned plainly ... Work Health and Safety is about visualizing what can go wrong, Strategising to avoid it happening, and helping keep people safe.

A lot of people run from snakes, but safety experts act differently. WHS requires us to anticipate the snake, keep it in view, know how to react, train others to do similarly, keep unneeded snakes out, manage the snakes that are already inside, and strategy for the ones that are birthed every day.

Stated candidly ... WHS activities have to do with helping business owners cover their arse, abide by the law and keep their people safe.

These are the WHS elements that are apparent. Let's talk about 3 subjects that don't get given much time.

A NUMBER OF WHS ASPECTS WE DON'T TEND TO SPEAK ABOUT
At a top level, we see requirements, checks, balances and procedures. Beneath these top behaviours, guiding concepts are at work, with duty of care and due diligence leading the way. If we look even deeper, we see a prolonged range of aspects, inspirations, concepts and philosophies, of which, there are 3 I wish to touch on:

1. Ethical awareness,
2. Wrestling with morality, and
3. Handling and enabling emotion,

Consider them as trail guides to help you browse when federal government, scenarios, or your individuals require you off the well-worn courses that you are used to.

WHS INCORPORATES ETHICS

You very likely currently have an operating ethical compass if you've read this far. You might not have actually thought much about its application in the safety context. 'Application' is what ethics has to do with. Ethics is the application of morality in an offered circumstance. To put it simply, morality is a system that tells us what is right and wrong, and ethics is the application of those rights and wrongs in a given situation. It can be fairly argued that ethics change with time, but morality is constant.

Where does this fit in the WHS context? Ethics is like a trail guide that informs you to get the rate, decrease, or step carefully. The virtue or morality remains in reaching the location; ethics is worked out in arriving appropriately.

For instance, while many employees believe it is right to discuss unsafe circumstances (morality), but not all do (ethics). Many likewise understand it is right for them to correct a supervisor who is directing them to do something dangerous (morality), however numerous would not follow through on this conviction (ethics). There is typically a gap in between morality and ethics and I have a strong suspicion that gap was narrower in my dad's day.

The take-away: do not presume that morality suffices, or that the ethical behaviour seen in one work domain will also be evidenced in another. Efficient WHS isn't practically what is right; it's also about creating a work area where ethical behaviour is the standard. A few of the ideas that follow will help.

WHS IS UNAPOLOGETICALLY MORAL

We've currently pointed out that morality is the art of understanding the difference in between best and wrong, even when the right thing is less helpful. It's the ethical equivalent of having 'an individual truth' - and in a workplace safety situation, that is a catastrophe waiting to happen.

My old man taught me that right is incorrect and best is wrong. Even when it hurts, ideal stays right, and incorrect stays incorrect. Our employees may disagree on how right and wrong is decided, but employees need to come together when it pertains to WHS. It's fine for a worker to know that their opinions and their morality have worth, however when it concerns safety decisions, in all however the most exceptional of cases, the ethical thing to do is what the legislation says to do.

What if a supervisor, a fellow worker or government authority acts, demands or manoeuvres in an immoral way? Clearly, there are times when what is legal is likewise unethical; for example, both before and during World War 2 the Nazi SS rounded up Jewish, Homosexual and polish people for damage.

The take-away for me, and perhaps for you, is that something does not become unethical or ethical due to the fact that the law or the crowd states it is. These days, I understand that personal morality differs exceptionally from person to person - possibly more than ever in the past. Because I require to wrestle with the implications of a morally uncertain reality, that brings an obstacle to my workplace. Clear communication and decisions will assist - but sticking my head in the sand won't.

Morality offers none of us a free pass, and I reckon my dad's generation understood that much better than we do.

Work Health and Safety INVOLVES FEELING
When it comes to emotions, there are two groups (or extremes) that tend to control. These emotions cause hesitancy and trepidation, leading employees to not speak when they should. These emotions get in the method of reliable communication, shut down open discussion and increase the probability of errors and hazards happening.

What are we to do? The workplace requires all kinds of personalities, so all these emotions will make a look. We require to find a method to deal with emotional extremes.

My father's generation was big on personal responsibility and simply "getting shit done". My generation was more interested in self-confidence and understanding ourselves within a team-oriented context. Today's young people appear to believe the world revolves around their wants, their requirements, and their fact.

Maybe there's a winning balance to be found in between, and I reckon honesty is a great location to begin. For example, a team leader can show the way by prefacing his comments to motivate emotional awareness and self-management. For example:

"I feel a little nervous raising this, however I'm going to ..."
"Wait! Offer me a minute. I'm too f 'n upset and I'm gon na state something we'll both regret."
"I don't mind if you do 'you' at home. When we're here, we do 'us'!

WHAT'S THE TAKE-AWAY?
Whatever the specifics of your Work Health and Safety role, being aware of these three underpinning problems will absolutely assist your results. It seems to me that there is little to lose and much to get. Ethical awareness, the willingness to wrestle with morality, and emotional responsiveness are all locations of investment, not expense.

As we close, you may have noted that I have not even mentioned an item - and I'm not going to. Today, my product silence is my method of walking the talk. What I have actually shown you is so foundational it deserves an undistracted focus.
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