Do you take the ‘No Blame’ approach to safety?
Let me start with defining what I mean by this:
If someone is injured at work, the procedural behemoth kicks into life, fed by the potential risk of prosecution and insurance company scrutiny it is on the warpath, looking for a culprit!
Before it devours you and dictates your thoughts and assumptions – STOP!
First, spare a thought for how awful it is for the person who has suffered – quite possibly because they were trying to make something or meet a deadline or do a repair for a client or customer – just doing their job for the common good of the company.
Bury any thoughts of they might have cut a corner, not been careful enough, made a mistake or distracted and not paying attention.
Next: Be committed – actually get off your rear end and go meet the injured sole, where it happened, step into his or her shoes – immerse yourself in their world, their processes and their environmental pressures.
It’s a bit like being the ‘Undercover Boss’ – but this time be the Understanding Boss!
Yes we have to figure out what went wrong but for crying out loud don’t formulate any opinion from behind the desk in the office – unless of course, that’s exactly where the accident happened – in which case Rock On!
Let me give you a common example. The accident report comes dinging into the office. Bert Lumberjack has had to go to A&E with a bad back.
The spiralling thoughts of Bert wrestling with a lump of deadwood (timber, not the management team) or him pile-driving his way into the ruck during the Vets rugby game last weekend automatically start populating a concocted story in the mind.
Picking up Bert from A&E would be a better place to start, revisiting the site with him, even better!
Staying loosely with this this topic:
The HSE: and let me make it very clear how exceptionally lucky we are here in the UK to have such a fabulous source of top notch information! The HSE recently published a new web guide on Manual Handling and stated “Off-the-shelf handling training is a Waste of Money”
Good on them, we at EcoSafety have been spouting this for years – we totally agree, monkeying around with a cardboard box can make a mockery of the whole subject area.
Start be trying to eliminate or reduce to a minimum any manual handling.
If your risk assessment decides you do need to train then get a professional outfit to deliver something customised to cover what your employees actually handle.
That’s what we pride ourselves in doing on an EcoSafety Manual Handling Course.
In Bert’s case, if it does turn out that he need his techniques update for handling timber then it’s Hi Ho, Hi Ho it’s off to the woods we go!