Interview
level of risk. This will depend on factors such as the industry, the skill of the operatives and even the culture of the nationals concerned. Deciding what level of risk is acceptable can involve a huge debate, so people often just prefer to avoid the issue or fall back on standards or legal definitions. In some cases standards and/or legal definitions are a good route forward but I always suggest that a proper debate is had about what the acceptable level of risk is, as this can help give some clarity – even if in the end the answer is not a firm one.
Fig. 2. The terms ‘risk’ and ‘hazard’ are often confused; adding control measures to existing risks can reduce the overall level of risk, even if the number of hazards increases.
“For multinational companies there can also be a moral angle: do you impose equally high standards in your plants around the world, even if there is no regulatory requirement to do so? Within some companies this may be seen as an issue of corporate social responsibility, and there could equally be concerns about how investors and customers might react if health and safety management was perceived to be poor in factories located in low-wage economies.”
Safety bubbles
Even if a company thinks it is managing risk effectively, it is easy to be lulled into accepting a level of risk that is actually higher than it is thought to be or rising as risk controls cease to be effective. “Arthur D. Little has developed the concept of ‘safety bubbles’ to describe what can happen,” says Catmur. “These have striking parallels with the ‘economic bubbles’ found in financial markets. “A safety bubble is a slowly growing set of conditions,
fostered by certain behaviours and assumptions in the organisation. When the safety bubble bursts it can result in catastrophic disruption to the business and even fatalities. Typically a safety bubble will develop as a company attempts to cut costs, such as by using cheaper materials, fewer safety devices, longer maintenance intervals and so on. If the first round of cuts is successful, with improved margins and no significant incidents, then the company may seek to make further cuts. However, if operational cost cutting proceeds to such an extent that there is no longer adequate contingency based on objective risk pricing, the result is an unsustainable condition in which inherent safety margins are progressively eroded. Hence the safety bubble develops. Importantly,
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