Workplace safety: No improvements likely despite Longford

"There had been an expectation that the Longford experience would cause many companies to lift their safety performance. But what we’re seeing is often little more than a scramble to secure a legal defence," said Mr Carl Luttig, managing director of leading occupational health and safety advisors ZEAL Consulting.

Mr Luttig said safety audits implemented by companies scared by the prospect of major legal action commonly failed on both counts. In short, OHS audits often:

• do not properly address health and safety risks, and 
• do not constitute a viable legal defence.

"Companies that think of good audit results as a ‘get-out-of-jail card’ will be in for a rude shock because it takes a lot more these days to defend yourself against charges of negligence," said Mr Luttig.

But the most disturbing aspect, he said, was the fact that most audits were inadequate because they did not properly identify risks. Inevitably that meant such risks were allowed to continue to exist.

Even audits which were conducted not as a cynical defensive measure, but with the genuine intention of assessing inherent risks, often fell well short of the mark.

"Most audits use a laundry list approach. Items are ticked off very much like in a roadworthy test. But no one would suggest that simply because a car has been given a clean bill of health that its engine can’t blow up or the windscreen wiper motor won’t pack up in the middle of a storm".

"Companies that do not appreciate that difference are seriously misguided."

Mr Luttig said the cultural dimension of companies was most critical to employees’ health and safety. Yet it was rarely addressed in audits.

Unless such complex cultural aspects were properly understood and factored into the equation, there could be no true appreciation of risk.

He said the profound impact of organisational culture – from the board level down to the shop-floor – was further compounded by the effects of perpetual change.

This applied particularly to the ever-increasing use of outsourced services.

He said organisational change and outsourcing had blurred the lines of responsibility in many companies.

There were many recent examples of employees’ health and safety being seriously compromised as a result of such gaps in managerial responsibilities. Indeed the breakdown of several major public services had been attributable to change-related problems.

"Nobody wants those gaps to exist. But the fact is they do, and it is up to companies to ensure they are properly plugged".

"If such gaps existed in areas that impact directly on profit performance, solutions would no doubt be readily found. That same determination must be applied to protecting the health and safety of employees," said Mr Luttig.