Could Management Have Avoided a Tragic Death?

Last month, Arinite was approached by BBC Radio Sussex news team, and I was interviewed live on air for my views on the tragic death of 30-year-old floor-layer Paul Tilcock, who was overcome by toxic fumes from a flooring adhesive.  It seems hard to believe that 40 years after I started my first job in the chemical industry warning managers about solvent dangers, people are still dying from this hazard. Perhaps there is an explanation – though by no means a justification. During the two decades that I worked in manufacturing industry, I was often warned by line managers that “production is king”. Financial Penalty Clauses From the Customer Nowhere was this more apparent than the automotive industry, where just-in-time production means that comforting inventories of buffer stock have all but disappeared.  In the event of a serious malfunction, employees sometimes took it upon themselves, or were even tacitly encouraged by line managers, to ignore well-established safety procedures in order to “move the metal” – otherwise face swingeing financial penalty clauses from the customer. Even in modern office and IT departments, I see highly-committed staff staying long hours to “finish a project” to the point where it’s probably unsafe for them to drive home in such a state of exhaustion. When I pointed out to one particular manager that our company was covered by a policy on health & safety, signed by no less than the Chief Executive, he swiftly dismissed the policy as just another piece of paper, and proffered a view that the CEO didn’t believe what he had signed up to. What is the trick to redressing this balance – to help people understand that they are not only paid to work, but to work safely? Teams of industrial psychologists have pondered this question for decades – although the answer can be boiled down very simply. If an organisation puts all the emphasis on hitting output targets, and the manager who has the power to give or withhold rewards turns a blind eye to – or worse still, actively encourages risk-taking – then staff will take their cue accordingly. Employees often show surprising loyalty, and will willingly place their long-term health or safety at risk if they believe that a reward might be forthcoming (even if the reward is only a few words of praise).  No amount of hectoring from an outside health and safety department is going to persuade staff to ignore the boss’s orders, however unsafe or ill-advised those orders might be.

• We therefore need to look at the reward system, and help staff understand that the Company really is serious about its H&S Policy and that not only do staff have the right to refuse to do something unsafe, but they will be rewarded if they speak up.
• Most large companies have a formal appraisal system and somewhere, this system should ask the director/manager to confirm that his reportee has fulfilled all their obligations under the H&S Policy (even the lowliest member of staff has H&S obligations).
• Speak to your HR department to see whether the performance appraisal system can be updated to include health & safety!

With my rose-tinted spectacles on, I’d like to think that every manager will faithfully verify his reportee’s H&S performance but in truth, some will just tick the box regardless and move on. So what more can be done? Arinite’s March blog recommended that companies run a dashboard of health and safety performance indicators with a score (say, out of ten) for where they are today, and where they would like to be in 6 months’ time. April’s blog further suggested that individual departments produce their own local plan of how they will reach this target. Let mathematics take care of the rest: if a department fails to move its H&S score on the dashboard from the current score to the target score – no-one receives that element of their performance bonus.  Failure to meet health & safety targets therefore hurts people in their pocket. At the very least, it gets managers talking to their reportees during staff appraisals about the importance of health & safety – and provides a platform to challenge their managers too. Contact us Arinite clients appreciate we provide practical, no-nonsense advice about what you need to do to establish and maintain a safe and healthy working environment. Our team of health and safety consultants take pride in keeping health and safety simple. If you need to call upon our expert assistance, or just for an informal chat, please call our office 0207 947 9581, or contact us https://www.arinite.com/contact-us Jan Mirkowski