What you really need… is it time to push back on safety clutter?

The concept of mastery is explored in one of my favorite books, the 5am Club. In a nut shell, a great level of mastery is required to break down complex information, and explain it in simple terms. Our team has spent the best part of the last 15 years mastering the art of creating the most simple OHS management systems possible…

1. Whilst addressing the required legal duties and obligations;
2. Creating outputs that are relevant to site-based activities; and
3. Ensuring the system can be understood and applied by the target audience.

So given all the work put in to achieve the above, and buy-in gained from workers who will use the system you can understand my disappointment when a multi-national, or other large enterprise imposes ‘above and beyond’ expectations on our small and medium sized enterprise (SME) owners… and for what?

Where exactly is the evidence to validate that changing the format, adding additional paperwork, or changing the risk ratings on something will actually keep our workers any safer? I guess the compliance box can be ticked, but it creates nothing less that confusion for our SME’s who are navigating an ever-complex vortex of safety requirements, which change from client to client. Their workers are confused, disillusioned, and not really sure how any of this will actually keep them safe.

For me, it demonstrates that those requesting such nonsense are not suitably qualified to understand the SMEs legal duties and obligations, or in applying an evidence-based approach to work health and safety. It also calls into question the extent to which they are directing and supervising the contracting company with respect to OHS, which is dangerous ground to cover.

I think its time to push back, in a respectful and informed way. Next week our team will attend a meeting with one of our SMEs to advocate on their behalf, for the safety management system that has been developed. We will explain how it address the relevant legal duties and obligations, and why we consider the additional requirements that are being requested as safety clutter. Safety clutter, especially for SMEs, is a massive problem resulting in ineffective activity, cynicism, and gets in the way of getting work done (Rae, Provan, Weber & Dekker, 2018.)

The difficulty for our SMEs is that they don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them, and so it’s often easier to just do what the client asks for, even it’s problematic, costly and ineffective.

What do you think? I think that Health and Safety Professionals can be better advocates for the small end of town. According to the ABS, 97.3% of all business in Australia (or around 2.5 million) are small businesses, and a further 2.5% are medium businesses (64,559), employing 20-199 employees. It’s definitely a fight worth having.