Health and Safety

Upon completion of this unit, students should be able to:

5. Apply risk management principles to reduce the impact of workplace hazards.

1. 5.1 Apply the concept of acceptable risk to a workplace scenario.

2. 5.2 Describe how the as low as reasonably practicable (ALARP) concept can be used in

determining acceptable levels of risk.

7. Examine management tools necessary to implement effective safety management systems.

1. 7.1 Analyze a major section of ANSI/AIHA Z10.

2. 7.2 Analyze the possible challenges companies may face in implementing ANSI/AIHA Z10.

Reading Assignment

Chapter 1:

Overview of ANSI/AIHA Z10-2012

Chapter 2:

Achieving Acceptable Risk Levels: The Operational Goal

Unit Lesson

Welcome! While this course will introduce you to the concepts of safety management systems, the “total” in the course title means that you will also be drawing from the knowledge gained in previous courses to complete the unit assignments and the course project. After completing the course, you should have increased confidence in applying what you have learned in your educational journey to real-word situations. The term total, in the course title also aligns with an approach to management that you may have heard of in the past. That approach is Total Quality Management or TQM, and it was introduced into the United States by Dr. Edward Deming who essentially proposed a new, continuous improvement-focused way of managing quality in organizations. His approach was successful and was implemented with great success by some of the largest organizations in the world that actually improved on his methods. Many of these organizations also noted that these new quality management tools also could be applied to other difficult-to-manage issues that presented themselves in the workplace including occupational safety and health.

This course will essentially focus on the evolution of safety and health management systems that grew out of the TQM movement. It also will examine the success experienced by a large number of organizations that have seen a dramatic decrease in injuries and illnesses in the workplace by implementing Occupational Safety and Health (OSH) programs that align with TQM principles. The course will also allow you to apply these concepts in your coursework and hopefully provide you with some useful information to improve the safety and health program efforts where you work.

Given the success experienced in many organizations as a result of their safety and health program efforts, you might wonder what a successful Occupational Safety and Health program looks like. What are the characteristics that set one organization apart from another when it comes to reducing the numbers of illnesses and injuries? Perhaps your answer would include things like compliance with the

Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) standards, elimination of workplace hazards, or training that addresses all of the safety standard requirements. After all, these are the types of things many organizations focus on when it comes to guiding their safety and health efforts.

Of course, these are all important factors to consider as compliance with safety standards is useful for eliminating workplace hazards and avoiding OSHA citations is always a good thing as well. A compliance- only approach, however, can only take a company so far when it comes to assuring a safe and healthful workplace. This is largely because many workplace injuries and illnesses are not so much the result of employers’ lack of effort to comply but are more closely tied to the willingness of employees to embrace workplace safety measures. In essence, employees can and often do sabotage employer safety efforts. Employees can choose, for instance, to not wear their fall protection or bypass machine guards when management is not looking and sometimes with the approval of their supervisors. Consider a situation where Ralph, a long-time employee, continues to use an old, dilapidated, unguarded table saw instead of its replacement. He tells his supervisor, “I’ve been using this ol’ saw for 18 years and it has not hurt me yet.” Rather than fight with Ralph, the supervisor lets him continue to use the old saw knowing that there will likely be no consequence.

Stories similar to Ralph’s are not all that uncommon in companies that utilize a compliance approach to safety and essentially dictate safety rules and compliance-based solutions to their workers. This is one benefit of the total safety management approach because a great deal of effort is made to make occupational safety and health a core value of the organization and to affect the organization’s culture. In such an organization, people do not conduct themselves in a safe manner and follow rules to keep from getting into trouble; rather, they do so because it is a cultural expectation of the organization, and it would seem odd not to follow the safety rules.

With this said, you may have heard that organizations with a well-developed safety culture are the most successful, but most of us would be hard-pressed to really define a safety culture. Is it when safety is an inherent value rather than a simple priority? Is it when management demonstrates a great deal of commitment to safety or empowers employees? Is it when everyone in an organization is involved with its safety and health efforts? Maybe it is all of these things. On the other hand, it may be some combination of these things. One thing that is clear, however, is that it is hard to pinpoint exactly what it means for an organization to have a safety culture. One thing is certain. It does not occur on its own.

Organizations with successful accident prevention programs work hard to get there. One of the factors these organizations seem to have in common is that they have a safety management process that guides them in their efforts. Another characteristic is that the process evolves. That is, once a problem is solved, the organization is proactive in looking for other ways to prevent the incident from happening again. Is this not the same type of system that organizations use to manage their business processes? Yes, this is key. Successful OSH programs are managed in much the same way as other business processes. There are at least two advantages to this. First is that the language of the system is already familiar to the non-safety folks in the organization, so they are more willing to adopt it. Second, it seems to work.

If you research safety management standards, you will find that there is an abundance. The British National Standards Institute publishes the Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series (OHSAS) 18001 and British Standard (BS) 8800; the International Labor Organization (ILO) publishes ILO-OSH 2001. This course will introduce you to the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and the American Industrial Hygiene Association’s (AIHA) ANSI/AIHA Z10, American National Standard for Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems (Z10). Why focus on this standard as opposed to the others? Z10 was developed to include and build on many of the best management practices from the other available standards (Manuele, 2014). Even if your organization already uses one of the other standards, you will find that Z10 is compatible and can add value.

The course is not designed to get you to use Z10 exclusively but to help you recognize the characteristics of a good safety management system and how such a management system can be used to develop or improve an OSH program. Nearly all safety management systems contain similar elements for example, management leadership, employee participation, hazard analysis, risk assessment, incident investigation, and audits. Even OSHA’s Voluntary Protection Program (VPP) has most of these elements (OSHA, n.d.).

So, why not just use VPP? OSHA’s VPP program was developed in the 1980s to recognize the safety efforts of high-performing organizations. It was not developed as a safety management standard, although over the years it has become a de facto standard of sorts. VPP has been criticized lately for not being effective. Some organizations that have maintained VPP Star status for years are still experiencing serious accidents and

occasionally even fatalities.

Title

One of the things that sets Z10 apart from VPP and many of the published standards is its focus on continuous improvement—specifically the use of Deming’s Plan-Do- Check-Act (PDCA) cycle throughout the standard. Later in the course, we will spend time reviewing the PDCA concepts and practice applying them. One of the pitfalls of using VPP or any standard is the temptation to reach the end, full compliance with the standard, and then reduce efforts. Z10 recognizes that the process is never complete and drives organizations to continuous improvement.

Z10 also focuses on assessing workplace hazards in terms of risk rather than standards compliance. In an ideal world, we would be able to reduce workplace risk to zero, but the very nature of risk as an expression of probability makes this impossible. As discussed by Manuele (2014), one of the most important management tasks related to workplace safety is the defining of acceptable risk. There is no one-size-fits-all definition. Each organization will have different constraints related to its own processes and finances, and finances do play an important role in defining acceptable risk. If an organization has an effective safety management system, however, the safety culture can help the organization reach a consensus. We will be referring back to risk and risk management frequently as we learn more about Z10.

The ALARP (as low as reasonably practicable) principle is a term used in the OSH field.

(Legg, 2007)

Throughout the course, we will be looking deeper into the process elements of Z10 and using them to evaluate OSH programs where you work or used to work. The course project will be a report to management on the status of the safety program, with recommendations and timelines to correct deficiencies and put the organization on the path to a world-class OSH program.

References

Boyd, M. A., Maier, M. P., & Caton, J. E. (2008, December 9). Capability management [Image]. Retrieved from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Capability_management.jpg

Legg, D. W. (2007, June 28). Carrot diagram [Image]. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carrot_Diagram.jpg

Manuele, F. A. (2014). Advanced safety management: Focusing on Z10 and serious injury prevention (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Occupational Safety and Health Administration. (n.d.). OSHA voluntary protection programs (VPP). Retrieved from http://www.osha.gov/dcsp/vpp/index.html