Main Feature


climate. It has often been the case in the past that when companies are struggling or when a workforce fears for its continued employment there is a tendency to ‘do things more efficiently’ or in plain English ‘cut corners’. Pushing a workforce to work faster, complete more in the day than is practical or even possible can lead to a tired, pressured staff that, though not deliberately, create circumstances that lead to either their own accident or one that has been, although unawares by the perpetrator, set up for someone else to precipitate. It cannot be underestimated the affect that financial pressure will bring into the workplace and how this might affect the safety ethos within a workforce.


Looking at the data it appears that the levelling off of the accident statistics has to a significant extent coincided with the financial down turn that started back in 2008 and which the country as a whole is only just now really starting to emerge from. It is quite possible that at least in part this situation has had some form of importance in the decline in accident/incident numbers.


Another potential worry point after over 20 years of H&S pressure across the various industries is that the safety message has become too common. It is now fully understood that unlike 20-odd years ago if you do not now hold the correct certification, the right card or have the correct and recognised training you will not work in your chosen profession. So, it may be that the idea that training is there for a health and safety reason has to some extent gone by the board and is now seen as so ‘every-day’ that the certification process is more akin to getting GCSEs that prove an ability to learn and carryout the job in hand rather than the ability to apply the training safely. Has it become a key to employment rather than the key to safe working practice?


If this is the case have we reached something of an impasse where whilst the workforce may be trained to a standard and certificated as such, the practical implementation in the field of the training undertaken has become less effective simply because it has now become just another qualification to add to the CV rather than the safety driver it is meant to be?


There is also the factor that once a worker has undertaken the training and passed the tests to gain the certification/card or qualification required for a specific job/activity there is no requirement for this to be field tested at any point in the time between the initial gaining of the qualification and the time of its renewal/upgrading. This time span can be anything from as little as two to three years up to even five years down the line from that first test. Is this lack of follow up of trainees something that could be another underlying factor that could be driving the slowdown in accident statistics improvement?


Is there therefore a need, if not the desire, to


implement a ‘random selection’ field inspection process that would enable an industry specific body to simply turn up on site with a staff that is itself qualified in the various aspects of the works being undertaken that would arrive unannounced at site to observe how work is being carried out and assess the level of application of the certification/training that the workers qualification says should be applied. If it is not being applied correctly warnings could be given, sanctions applied even to the point of retraining being required or even a lost job for repeat offenders should it get that far.


The fact that at any time an ‘assessment visit’ might occur would on its own tend to make the workforce undertake tasks as required by the regulations or the training they have received and incentivise them not to look to short circuit or corner cut tasks to save time and money whilst compromising safety. It would only take a few highly publicised incidents and sanctions to get through to the workforce in general that bad working practice will not be tolerated.


There are those that will say that is what HSE is for. Unfortunately not, HSE it appears tends to investigate after the fact and it does not operate as a police force for the correct application of training.


Its main thrust in such cases is to investigate a specific accident and report on how and why it occurred and see if there are failings in management or elsewhere in the organisation that may lead to criminal prosecution or sanction under existing legislation. They may also recommend changes to existing rules that might prevent future occurrences.


Training providers themselves do not have the resources to provide such a follow up service and those requiring training would not be inclined to pay the higher costs of courses to cover such a field assessment programme. Furthermore to have the training providers implement such a field assessment programme could offer a potential conflict of interest scenario in that training providers might be tempted, if their trainees where showing consistent signs of bad working practice, to cover their own backs rather than highlight that potentially their training methods are not getting through to the trainees in the way intended.


This is something that would need to be taken on by the likes of HSE but it would need to be funded separately from the functions that it already undertakes. At a time of austerity the question is where will the funding come from?


In similar vein but on a slightly different tack, we have all come across situations where the cry of ‘this is health & safety gone mad’ has been ringing our ears. In situations like this there is the potential for the safety message to be lost as workers and the population in general see the promotion of health & safety as just another reason to stop people doing things their own way. Often in all walks of life the attitude of ‘Oh not this again’ springs to the fore and many feel they are being ‘nannied’ by the state, H&S organisations, training providers and employers. This could potentially lead to a state in which the H&S message becomes something akin to ‘white noise’ in the workplace as it is repeated over and over again. This could end out with the workforce treating the message with an indifferent attitude ending up with whole workforce populations potentially treating the H&S requirement less seriously than it has done in previous decades because ‘we already know all this so leave alone to get on with job we know what we are doing and how to do it’, thereby adding to the potential for reduction in improved accident stats.


THE HUMAN FACTOR


There is of course one underlying factor that has yet to be discussed here in terms of a human workforce and the accidents they have. That is the fact that we are indeed dealing with human beings.


No matter how much training is given, no matter how much regulation is put in place, no matter how much or how good a level of supervision there is, human beings make mistakes. The question then becomes ‘is there a limit on how much can be done in reality to reduce accidents and has that point been reached given the flattening of the statistics curve?


6 drain TRADER | December 2016 | www.draintraderltd.com


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