I wrote the start of this blog in November 2012, but it has never been posted… until now. I was the WHS officer for a transport company, but I was not the HSR – Health Safety Representative, who are elected by workers. I attended monthly WHSQ Transport Industry meetings with people from all different companies, all who worked similar to me – as a WHS officer. I was also the trainer, the Rehabilitation & Return to Work Co-ordinator, the Fire Safety adviser, an audit person qualified with RABQSA, and I had my Graduate Diploma of Occupational Health & Safety (university Level 8) – more than anyone I knew of in the company where I worked. I felt the way as this blog said in 2012, and I still feel the same way. This is what I wrote in 2012:
Workplace health and safety seems to be a subject that brings out the passion in many people. Perhaps it’s the nature of the beast – the connection to life and, possibly, death – that makes us want to do our best and be our best and encourage everyone else to be the same, but that, it would appear, is where the trouble starts. No-one seems able to agree on “best practice” in WHS, least of all the legislators. Never mind harmonisation, there are a whole raft of other issues that we argue about as a professional group which need resolution before the harmonisation pipe dream will ever even look like coming to fruition.
Rote learning or reasoned discussion?
Professional or practitioner - what’s the difference and why do we differentiate?
Human error or system error?
Common sense or commonality of understanding?
What are the best or worst audit tools?
Can you ever achieve zero harm?
What do we want in a professional organisation?
Education or training?
If lag indicators are so useless why do we use them?
Can an employer ever be not responsible under duty of care?
Even if s/he has taken all reasonably practicable steps?
WHS practitioner or trainer-counsellor-medic-ergonomist-investigator-presenter-negotiator?
No two workplaces are the same, even in the same industry. No two industries are the same. Yet the rules and regulations apply to a 10-person muffler repair shop exactly the same as to a 100-person delivery company or a 1,000 person mine site.
There is no distinction in the legislation for size, or for the financial ability of the employer to have the best WHS employees or consultants.
There is no distinction in the legislation between the owner/manager of a small suburban produce store who works 7 days a week running his own business and provides employment to half a dozen people, or the CEO of a national company who manages a publicly owned company which employs 5,000.
I didn’t finish this blog in 2012, and a few months later I had my stroke and I forgot about it. When I was looking through my PC files today I found this. For me, WHS is still definitely the same as it was back in 2012. Management often paid lip service to WHS, evidenced as in my own workplace, by the number of times the State Manager and others didn’t attend scheduled WHS meetings. I still have copies of some of the reports I wrote, which were ignored. I was extremely disheartened by the lack of responsibility shown by senior management to issues that caused a furore, and I am certain that this is shown in many other companies, albeit small or large.
I can’t work in WHS now (my memory fades daily and I get too tired), but if you know anyone who is in WHS, whether or not they are actually working during COVID-19, talk to them. Find out how they work. Find out what they do. Have they ever been working on the harmonisation pipe dream and will it ever even look like coming to fruition? What have they been doing?
I’d really like to know.
