Organisational safety seen by some as an organisational façade for arse-covering

So…one doesn’t need to go far to find “mild criticisms” of safety as an organisational façade of “arse covering”.

Not much to say here – just a few examples out of many…No reason why – just for giggles.

Including:

· from the ‘toothless tiger’ of a regulator

· safety rules seen by workers as “arse covering” by the organisation and a tool for blame

· Manipulation of incident measures, box ticking, or rules encouraging “mindless compliance”

· Paperwork giving managers a sense of safety but not for the workers, who valued their own experience and knowledge

· Endless pages in method statements which will never be read by the people it’s supposed to aid and is a false sense of safety in court

[** FYI This isn’t a post advocating for abandoning rules and safety systems.]

Refs:

Image 1: Gregson, S., Hampson, I., Junor, A., Fraser, D., Quinlan, M., & Williamson, A. (2015). Supply chains, maintenance and safety in the Australian airline industry. Journal of Industrial Relations, 57(4), 604-623.

Image 1: Catching them at it: An ethnography of rule violation 2007. 8; Ethnography. Marian Iszatt-White

Image 2: Workplace health and safety in the Australian coal mining industry: Mistrust, management and regulation. Darren Lloyd Sinclair November 2014.

Image 3: Borys, D. (2009). Exploring risk-awareness as a cultural approach to safety: Exposing the gap between work as imagined and work as actually performed. Safety Science Monitor, 13(2), 1-11.

Image 4: Oswald, D., Sherratt, F., Smith, S., & Dainty, A. (2018). An exploration into the implications of the ‘compensation culture’on construction safety. Safety science, 109, 294-302.