Tough Questions & Quotes

Question

There is a new test machine that can test if workers are fatigued or stressed. It's a simple device that clips onto a persons ear that gives a reading that says if the worker should go home or is fit for duty.

Question, would you as an officer purchase this safety device for your organisation considering these factors cause a majority of incidents?

Question

You are at work; you had a beer at lunch. Yeah you know the workplace limit is zero, but what the hell, you’re having a crap day and everyone does it from time to time, even the boss. Your work colleague has just told you that they have not slept for at least 48hrs and they can hardly keep their eyes open… just at that point there is a random alcohol test being done by HR with a new test machine, and they pick you out to blow, and you just go over zero. You feel fine and can even do a handstand, but you get sacked on the spot because “that’s the rule”. A few days later you hear that the tired work colleague fell asleep while operating plant and killed someone… Question: was the sacking of you "the intoxicated person" over the tired person more valid?

I am raising the issue of "technology discrimination" a new term I am thinking where we sack people because there is a simple test (drug) yet many people are a greater risk that have no tests (Tired)

Question

You’re a large retail store board, and in order to please the customers desire for cheap clothing, and continued financial success and prosperity, you have to purchase clothing from overseas sweatshops. You know young children are being made to work 16hr days, you know the wages that are paid barely cover food costs and you know the conditions of the workplace is terrible. Do you ignore these things and still purchase clothing from these places?

Question

You’re a government that has to make a choice on allowing gambling machines into society; you are given stats that show most gamblers are not just having fun, that many gamblers will end up having terrible misfortunes, but the cost of these misfortunes will not be higher than the revenue they gambling machines will make. Do you decided to allow gambling machines knowing that many lives will be ruined?

Question

You’re a safety consultant and you see a worker is under pressure to complete a task, they are a risk, you ask them what the issues are and you listen to them say that the boss has told them to hurry up and not worry about following procedure. Do you stop the job and have a talk with the boss and discuss the implication of such poor leadership?

Question

You are a parent and planning to go on a holiday with you two children. The car you own has worn brakes and bold tyres. Do you take the risk of putting you and your family in harm’s way? If you say no, then why do you ignore these sorts of risks at work.

Question

Does the safety department and the safety advisor collectively own safety within the workplace?

Question

Is it possible to not find any blame/responsibility for any negative incident that has occured?

Question

You are working through a risk assessment for a high risk activity. A visiting safety consultant asks; have you considered all uncertainties and considered all things that will unconsciously make for possible bad choices, can you consider these things in reality?

Question

As a safety advisor, you are asked to conduct an incident investigation, you complete your report that explains it was a manager failure, and hand it to the manager. After a few hours the manager hands it back to you and says that the incident is not a mangement issue and the worker simply make a mistake, change your report. Do you change your report and lie to keep your job?

Question

Your child is about to put their hand into boiling hot water on a stove, do you tell them that it is bad and not to do it?

(Some say you let them learn it by trial and error)

Question

Your child wants to take up Billy Cart racing as there has been a local club operating for 10 years. After a few competitions, for which your child is pretty good in his fast red mobile, you attend a day that is a bit wet from rain. You have some concerns, but it not enough to be serious enough to pull out of the race. As your child speeds down the steep road in first place, they come to a corner and slide off the road where they plummet 20 meters down a cliff, smash their head on a dead old tree and die. You say to yourself accidents happen and let it go, even though your wife is distraught. Now unbeknown to you, you find out a few days later that there were two previous deaths on the same corner and same rainy wet conditions, in the last ten years. You find that there has been repeated concerns raised about this corner and safety issues but nothing was done. There were no controls and no management of risk.

Do you seek to find blame that will give action to stop further incidents?

Question

You are an electrical engineer and tasked to repair plant that is broken down, you have to do this ASAP because 100,000 people in town will lose all power including the hospital that has not backup power as it being serviced, if you don't fix it you will loose your job under blame. You do not have another safety device to replace the one that failed, but you could override this safety device and this "should" work ok, but if the override fails it will cause $500,000 in damage. Do you override?

Question

You are expecting a site visit from the international corporate team, they come around once a year to see the operation first hand. Do you as a site manager spend that week prior preparing for this visit? (answering yes I must warn you says that you have been lax)

Question

You are an officer of a company that knows of unsafe acts being done, these acts are keeping the company profitable. One day a worker is killed, do you take any responsibility? or do you say you were unaware?

Question

As a worker, you have just cut your finger off doing something outside of best practice. You are entitled to get a work cover payout of $30,000. Do you accept the offer?

Question

You are a worker on a construction site. A manager is about to sack your workmate who deviated from rules and wants you to write a witness statement proving this. The Manager says that if you don’t he will not only sack the workmate, but the whole crew also. Do you tell the truth and snitch on your workmate?

Question

If you are behind in project management and task, do you cut corners to make up time?

Question

Your child is seriously hurt jumping on park playground equipment, this equipment turns out after some research to have caused many other injuries, but council does not listen, would you sue council?

Question

A Policeman pulls you over for breaking the law that is designed to save lives, were you targeted unfairly?

Question

Are laws put in place to ensure there is a collective means to do a process safely?

Question

Your boss asks you to use a chainsaw up a ladder to finish a small job because hiring a evelated work platform is a hassle, and there is no time. Do you do as your boss asks?

Question

If your work colleague is intoxicated at work, must you report them or send them home?

Question

If an organisation has a rule to wear safety boots, must you follow this rule?

Question

A fellow worker eats your chocolate bar, do you punch them in the face?

My Quote 87

We can fix complexity by slowing down to a point so that any new idea is not adding much more than what we know.

What we seem to do in our culture is 'jump' and 'skip' past stepping stones that if stepped and balanced on would ease our way simply through a transition of complete understanding. What makes our current way of rush and haste (we really are in a rush for who knows why) problematic and complex is the missing of the those steps. In a way its like making your child go from grade four to grade seven (skipping 5 and 6) ...in which grade 7 would seem highly complex to them (that if they had not skipped those years would not be complex)...

My Quote 53

I have seen "expert safety writers" go as far as criticising the general safety person for giving poor inductions; who said inductions are the sole responsibility of the safety person? Part of an induction should a safety topic, part of it should be HR, part of it production, etc etc. But guess who is the most convenient and cheaper option...the safety person. How many mangers do you see give an induction? nil!

It seems true to me that some people have targeted that safety person and will lay all blame onto them...it's a dam shame they have such small perspective.

My Quote 45

You cannot "think" unconsciously as some people say. The act of thinking requires the use of the prefrontal cortex, Inferior Frontal Gyrus, temporal and Parietal lobe. To "think" you need to make judgment, reason etc, this takes effort. The lazy use of the unconscious mind over the conscious mind is a mind void of judgment, hence risk cannot be judged, hence habitual habits reoccur.
If you are running on autopilot, you are void of rational thought. What wakes you from this state of void is something new, it is then you think.

My Quote 21

"Now, again we have this point raised about the need to include (psychology) human factors or human judgment in the risk assessments process with no solution given, just advice. We cannot even get the basics of risk assessment right as currently prescribed let alone having to understand the complexity of psychology and or having to employ psychologists to evaluate, diagnose, treat, and study human behavior and mental processes so to make more rules or give more advice on controlling/directing whatever human behavior may result in harm and poor decisions"

My Quote 17

"The reasons why rules are applied into our existence are because humans do wrong things constantly. We simply cannot have humans running around acting all human like, doing what they please at a time that suits them; we’d end up like the city of Sodom, and then we would have to implement all sorts of over reactive constraints and schemes and hire expert consultants to come in and listen to the issues so the problem of being human can be fixed using the ability to know the unknown of uncertainty...the human has access to freedom, but look what he does with it"

My Quote 82

Dis-empowered... Bye the powered!

“It’s easy to moan and redirect your responsibility, because so much seems out of our control — the bad economy, life requirements, system changes, un-organised goods, and many other disturbances. Many people feel dis-empowered by the complexity of our matrix styled structures, slow decision-making, and extra layers of humanising systems. The bottom line is that it’s tough to get things done when so many barriers exist; people, environment and ourselves — which leaves people feeling frustrated and in need of a sympathetic ear. In other words, the combination of human nature and a tough environment makes a “no whining” rule more important than ever...there are just too few ears hearing” MD

My Quote 36

I think OHS in Australia needs to be re-evaluated on this basis; to include all influences required to make the best choices. I think that (but don’t necessarily like it) we are creatures of systems, creatures that are programmed to follow, we are creatures set and governed by laws and rules. We need to collectively agree that this is the only option we have (as the open options seem to over complicate everything) and set rules etc as non negotiable to stop everyone going off making things up as they go along.

My Quote 16

The next step in safety is being permitted to have practicable time to apply safety practices so that people can act or be given the means to act in safe or safer way. It’s about providing real risk mitigation measures that have been learned though years of negative events. It’s about being able to use these rules provided in a manner in which they are prescribed. I have not been involved in one organisation yet that has used the prescribed methods fully. It’s not totally their fault, it’s our culture of pressures that make way for short cutting.