Notes

3 Work Health and Safety TOPICS WE RARELY DISCUSS

Work Health and Safety professionals pursue numerous common objectives and abide by similar rules. Whether you are a business owner, a PCBU, a Location Safety Officer, or part of my Occupational Safety Solutions team, we have certain subjects we frequently handle, as well as things we seldom go over. It's those underlying things that I wish to focus on today.

Regretfully, my father passed away three weeks back, and beyond the sorrow and sorrow, his passing away has me thinking outside the boxes we normally live in. Death, and specifically his death, has got me thinking about deeper concerns.

We reside in complex and really deceptive times. In the midst of this, the burdens being placed on employers are increasing, not just demanding more of our resources but also progressively demanding compliance to structures of thinking we and our employees may not always agree with. We're being forced off the well-worn paths, tracks and trails we're used to, and onto side-roads and goat trails and into uncertain surface.

Do you as a busy individual, as I do, wrestle with harmonizing work, personnel, household and friends? Do you also discover it hard at times to think beyond the obvious and the fundamentals?

THREE WAYS OF EXPLAINING WHS
The WHS function can be described clearly, significantly or with street-level bluntness:

Stated plainly ... Work Health and Safety is about visualizing what can go wrong, Strategising to avoid it taking place, and assisting keep people safe.

Stated more drastically ... I can metaphorically speak about the snakes of tragedy that are loose in a work environment. Many people range from snakes, but safety specialists act differently. WHS needs us to anticipate the snake, keep it in view, know how to respond, train others to do also, keep unnecessary snakes out, handle the snakes that are already inside, and plan for the ones that are birthed every day. It's a big job!

Specified bluntly ... Work Health and Safety activities are about assisting company owner cover their arse, abide by the law and keep their individuals safe.

However these are the WHS elements that are obvious. Let's discuss 3 topics that do not get provided much time.

A FEW WHS ASPECTS WE DON'T TEND TO SPEAK ABOUT
At a top level, we see requirements, protocols, checks and balances. Beneath these surface behaviours, guiding concepts are at work, with duty of care and due diligence blazing a trail. If we look even deeper, we see a prolonged range of aspects, principles, viewpoints and motivations, of which, there are three I wish to discuss:

1. Ethical awareness,
2. Wrestling with morality, and
3. Managing and allowing emotion,

Think of them as trail guides to help you navigate when government, circumstances, or your people require you off the well-worn courses that you are used to.

Work Health and Safety INVOLVES ETHICS

You may not have believed much about its application in the safety context. In other words, morality is a system that tells us what is right and incorrect, and ethics is the application of those rights and wrongs in a given situation. It can be reasonably argued that ethics alter over time, however morality is consistent.

Where does this fit in the WHS context? Ethics resembles a path guide that tells you to pick up the speed, slow down, or step thoroughly. The virtue or morality is in reaching the destination; ethics is worked out in getting there appropriately.

For instance, while the majority of employees think it is right to discuss hazardous situations (morality), but not all do (ethics). The majority of likewise know it is right for them to remedy a manager who is directing them to do something unsafe (morality), but numerous would not follow through on this conviction (ethics). There is often a gap in between morality and ethics and I have a strong suspicion that space was narrower in my dad's day.

The take-away: do not presume that morality is enough, or that the ethical behaviour seen in one work domain will also be evidenced in another. Reliable Work Health and Safety isn't practically what is right; it's likewise about developing a work space where ethical behaviour is the standard. A few of the suggestions that follow will assist.

WHS IS UNAPOLOGETICALLY MORAL

We've already pointed out that morality is the art of understanding the distinction between incorrect and best, even when the ideal thing is less helpful. It's the ethical equivalent of having 'an individual reality' - and in a work environment safety scenario, that is a disaster waiting to take place.

Our workers might disagree on how right and incorrect is chosen, but workers require to come together when it comes to Work Health and Safety. It's alright for a worker to understand that their viewpoints and their morality have value, however when it comes to safety decisions, in all but the most remarkable of cases, the moral thing to do is what the legislation says to do.

What if a supervisor, a fellow worker or government authority acts, needs or manoeuvres in an immoral method? Clearly, there are times when what is legal is also immoral; for example, both in the past and during World War Two the Nazi SS rounded up Jewish, Polish and homosexual individuals for destruction.

These days, I am conscious that individual morality varies profoundly from person to individual - perhaps more than ever previously. That brings a difficulty to my work environment due to the fact that I need to battle with the implications of a morally ambiguous truth.

Morality provides none people a free pass, and I reckon my dad's generation understood that better than we do.

WHS INCLUDES FEELING
There are 2 groups (or extremes) that tend to control when it comes to emotions. One emotional group is passive, while the other is reactive or proactive. The very first group, the passive emotions, tend to include worry or uncertainty. These emotions trigger hesitancy and nervousness, leading workers to not speak when they should. The second group is marked by emotions like greed, over-confidence, anger and arrogance. These emotions get in the way of efficient communication, shut down open discussion and increase the probability of threats and mistakes taking place.

What are we to do? The workplace needs all kinds of characters, so all these emotions will make a look. We need to discover a method to handle emotional extremes.

My dad's generation was big on personal duty and just "getting shit done". There was a clear expectation that the person would flex. Depressions and world wars will do that to you. My generation was more thinking about self-confidence and understanding ourselves within a team-oriented context. Today's young individuals appear to think the world revolves around their desires, their needs, and their truth. It's a dilemma and an incredibly frustrating one at that.

Perhaps there's a winning balance to be found in between, and I reckon honesty is a good location to start. A team leader can reveal the way by prefacing his remarks to motivate emotional awareness and self-management. For instance:

"I feel a little worried raising this, however I'm going to ..."
"Wait! Provide me a minute. I'm too f 'n mad and I'm gon na state something we'll both remorse."
"I do not mind if you do 'you' in the house. Heck, I do 'me' in your home. However when we're here, we do 'us'! Do you comprehend that?"

WHAT'S THE TAKE-AWAY?
Whatever the specifics of your WHS role, understanding these 3 underpinning problems will absolutely help your results. It appears to me that there is little to lose and much to get. Ethical awareness, the desire to wrestle with morality, and emotional responsiveness are all locations of financial investment, not expense.

As we close, you might have kept in mind that I haven't even discussed a product - and I'm not going to. Today, my product silence is my way of strolling the talk. What I have actually shown you is so foundational it is worthy of an undistracted focus.
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