Managing driving standards     An introduction to managing driving standards

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				Manage protection wisely
					All business organisations produce something, be it a product or a service. The production process will expose people to danger. Sufficient energy has to be put into safety to maintain production: significant over- or under-protection is likely to result in the end of the business. Smart business practice requires that managers control the distribution and interactions of production and protection. So, too, must every employee. However, some organisations tend to see production and protections as opposites competing for resources, with the energy going into one inevitably taking from the other. When such thinking pervades an organisation, it may result in an OH&S system that is both business-dumb and treatment-dumb.
					The system may be business-dumb if it becomes preoccupied with measuring and reducing poor performance such as lost time injuries, incidents, or crashes. A business-dumb system relies heavily on benchmarks that can end up setting acceptable levels of errors. In turn, this promotes a view that so long as the organisation is above the benchmark, it's doing satisfactorily. Applied to business activities, a negative view of performance is a little like saying personnel must ensure that patients or customers are not unhappy. Such a view would say we must reduce the number of complaints from staff or customers. It might also say that we must reduce the number of patients arriving at hospital in a worse condition than when we commenced treatment. The business-dumb mindset fixates on avoiding negative experiences. Only by default are people expected to know and demonstrate positive business behaviour: a naive and blindly hopeful view. As with the difference in behaviour between the hypochondriac and the health fanatic, the difference between positive and negative business approaches is more than semantic. This is not to say measuring the negative aspects of performance is without value. For example, research has demonstrated the worth in collecting accurate data on near misses.
					The often-quoted models of Hienrich and Bird show that for every major incident, many hundreds of errors preceded it - the iceberg principle. An accurate knowledge of near misses has predictive value and can help the organisation be proactive. The issue is one of balance and integration. When there is no balance the following may emerge: Each OH&S activity reinforces the view that protection is separate from or diametrically opposed to production. Feedback from OH&S activities that does not clearly connect with performance (business or individual) will not be meaningful to many people. This type of feedback also increases the perceived division between protection and production. OH&S is clumsy, constructed around legislative requirements, and managed to meet such requirements: these will inevitably be business-dumb. Independent OH&S systems generally communicate poorly with other business systems. OH&S activities place an avoidable strain on production activities. They also cause people to violate the rules if these people's needs to meet business or personal goals are greater than their needs to achieve protection goals. An emphasis on OH&S and high levels of OH&S activities cause people to perceive less risk in their behaviour than is actually the case. The chances of their expectancies being violated increase. OH&S with a strong separate identity from the business identity, increases the organisation's vulnerability to dispute. Personnel may use OH&S as a lever to get what they want. Separation results in missed opportunities to integrate protection activities into business activities or business activities into protection activities. At best, this results in duplicated effort or unnecessary extra effort. At worst, it creates dispute and hinders production. Technical experts solve production problems independent of protection experts, or visa versa, and energy is wasted at some future point. The business has not used its collective knowledge. OH&S activities, particularly those occurring as a reaction to a serious incident, consume an inordinate amount of energy on a problem. Such a problem might not have occurred if a fraction of the energy devoted to reacting to it was used to prevent it in the first place. Has your organisation a balanced and integrated approach to its protection and production activities? Use the resource How business smart are your protection activities? to help you make this judgment. Contact us for this resource.
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