Work health and safety experts pursue lots of common goals and comply with similar rules. Whether you are a business owner, a PCBU, a Location Safety Officer, or part of my Occupational Safety Solutions group, we have certain topics we typically deal with, in addition to things we seldom talk about. It’s those underlying things that I want to concentrate on today.
Sadly, my father departed 3 weeks ago, and beyond the sorrow and mourning, his passing away has me thinking outside packages we generally live in. He was a good guy, and I would’ve liked him to have actually had more time to purchase my kids and myself, however that’s not how it played out. He had a long innings, and he batted with strategic songs, noteworthy borders and even had actually a few “smacked out of the grounds for 6” minutes. However death, and particularly his death, has actually got me thinking of deeper concerns.
We live in complex and very misleading times. In the midst of this, the burdens being put on employers are increasing, not only demanding more of our resources but also increasingly demanding compliance to structures of thinking we and our workers might not always agree with. We’re being forced off the well-worn paths, tracks and tracks we’re used to, and onto side-roads and goat routes and into unpredictable terrain.
Do you understand any of these emotions? Do you as a busy person, as I do, wrestle with balancing work, workers, friends and family? Do you also find it hard sometimes to think beyond the obvious and the basics? If so, and you also find these to be difficult days, I believed I ‘d use a few insights from my off-the-beaten-track thinking. I hope they help!
3 METHODS OF EXPLAINING WHS
The WHS role can be explained plainly, considerably or with street-level bluntness:
Mentioned clearly … work health and safety is about predicting what can fail, Strategising to prevent it occurring, and assisting keep individuals safe.
The majority of individuals run from snakes, but safety experts act differently. WHS requires us to prepare for the snake, keep it in view, know how to react, train others to do similarly, keep unnecessary snakes out, manage the snakes that are currently within, and plan for the ones that are birthed every day.
Mentioned bluntly … work health and safety activities are about assisting entrepreneur cover their arse, adhere to the law and keep their individuals safe.
But these are the WHS elements that are apparent. Let’s speak about 3 topics that don’t get given much time.
A NUMBER OF WHS ASPECTS WE DON’T TEND TO SPEAK ABOUT
At a top level, we see requirements, procedures, balances and checks. Below these top behaviours, guiding concepts are at work, with duty of care and due diligence blazing a trail. If we look even deeper, we see an extended range of elements, viewpoints, principles and inspirations, of which, there are three I wish to touch on:
1. Ethical awareness,
2. Wrestling with morality, and
3. Handling and permitting feeling,
Consider them as trail guides to help you browse when government, situations, or your people force you off the well-worn courses that you are used to.
WORK HEALTH AND SAFETY INVOLVES ETHICS
You might not have thought much about its application in the safety context. In other words, morality is a system that informs us what is best and incorrect, and ethics is the application of those rights and wrongs in an offered situation. It can be fairly argued that ethics alter over time, however morality is continuous.
Where does this fit in the WHS context? Ethics resembles a trail guide that informs you to get the rate, slow down, or step carefully. The virtue or morality is in reaching the destination; ethics is exercised in arriving appropriately.
For example, while many employees think it is right to discuss harmful situations (morality), but not all do (ethics). The majority of also know it is right for them to correct a manager who is directing them to do something unsafe (morality), however numerous would not follow through on this conviction (ethics). There is often a gap in between morality and ethics and I have a strong suspicion that space was narrower in my father’s day.
The take-away: don’t presume that morality suffices, or that the ethical behaviour seen in one work domain will likewise be evidenced in another. Reliable work health and safety isn’t just about what is right; it’s likewise about developing an office where ethical behaviour is the norm. A few of the ideas that follow will help.
WORK HEALTH AND SAFETY IS UNAPOLOGETICALLY MORAL
We’ve already pointed out that morality is the art of understanding the distinction between best and incorrect, even when the ideal thing is less advantageous. It’s the moral equivalent of having ‘a personal fact’ – and in a workplace safety scenario, that is a disaster waiting to occur.
Our employees might disagree on how best and wrong is chosen, but workers require to come together when it comes to work health and safety. It’s fine for a worker to understand that their viewpoints and their morality have worth, but when it comes to safety decisions, in all but the most remarkable of cases, the ethical thing to do is what the legislation says to do.
What if a manager, a fellow worker or government authority acts, demands or manoeuvres in an unethical way? Clearly, there are times when what is legal is likewise immoral; for example, both before and throughout World War 2 the Nazi SS rounded up Jewish, Homosexual and polish individuals for damage.
The take-away for me, and possibly for you, is that something does not become moral or immoral due to the fact that the crowd or the law states it is. These days, I know that individual morality differs exceptionally from person to person – maybe more than ever previously. That brings an obstacle to my office since I require to wrestle with the ramifications of a morally uncertain reality. Clear communication and decisions will assist – but sticking my head in the sand will not.
Morality offers none of us a free pass, and I reckon my Daddy’s generation understood that better than we do.
WORK HEALTH AND SAFETY INCLUDES FEELING
There are 2 groups (or extremes) that tend to control when it comes to emotions. One emotional group is passive, while the other is proactive or reactive. The very first group, the passive emotions, tend to consist of worry or uncertainty. These emotions cause hesitancy and nervousness, leading workers to not speak when they should. The 2nd group is marked by emotions like greed, over-confidence, anger and arrogance. These emotions obstruct of reliable communication, closed down open discussion and increase the probability of dangers and mistakes occurring.
What are we to do? The office needs all types of characters, so all these emotions will make a look. We need to discover a way to handle emotional extremes.
My father’s generation was big on individual duty and just “getting shit done”. My generation was more interested in self-confidence and understanding ourselves within a team-oriented context. Today’s young individuals appear to think the world revolves around their wants, their needs, and their truth.
Perhaps there’s a winning balance to be found in between, and I reckon honesty is a good location to start. A group leader can reveal the way by prefacing his comments to motivate emotional awareness and self-management. For instance:
” I feel a little worried raising this, but I’m going to …”
” Wait! Give me a minute. I’m too f ‘n upset and I’m gon na state something we’ll both regret.”
” I do not mind if you do ‘you’ at home. Heck, I do ‘me’ in the house. When we’re here, we do ‘us’! Do you understand that?”
WHAT’S THE TAKE-AWAY?
Whatever the specifics of your work health and safety function, knowing these 3 underpinning problems will definitely help your results. It seems to me that there is little to lose and much to acquire. Ethical awareness, the desire to wrestle with morality, and emotional responsiveness are all areas of investment, not expense.
As we close, you may have kept in mind that I haven’t even discussed an item – and I’m not going to. Today, my item silence is my method of strolling the talk. What I have actually shown you is so foundational it should have an undistracted focus.