Canadian Occupational Safety (COS) magazine is the premier workplace health and safety publication in Canada. We cover a wide range of topics ranging from office to heavy industry, and from general safety management to specific workplace hazards.
Issue link: https://digital.thesafetymag.com/i/351680
8 Canadian Occupational Safety www.cos-mag.com PEOPLE&PLACES Countdown to accountability Former NASA astronaut Mike Mullane regaled a crowd o f about 860 health and safety professionals at the opening keynote session of the Western Con- ference on Safety in Vancouver on April 14. Mullane's "Countdown to Safety" talk drew lessons from his experiences as an astronaut — including losing colleagues in the Challenger disaster — that related to workplace health and safety. One of the reasons why the Challenger explosion occurred was because NASA fell victim to a long- term normalization of deviance, said Mullane. "It's that natural human tendency in pressure cir- cumstances to want to take shortcuts for best practice standards," he explained. "There's all sorts of pres- sures in the workplace — budget and schedule are huge pressures — and under pressure, people ratio- nalize how it's OK to shortcut a safety best practice." NASA had had other successful missions that used the O-ring — the part on the space shuttle that ulti- mately failed and led to the Challenger explosion — so it continued to use the part and did not think it would have an issue in the future, even though there were numerous studies and warnings that the O-ring was fl awed, said Mullane. This normalization of deviance occurs every day in organizations as well. "The immediate out- come is favourable, nothing bad happens, the leader led his team, there were no consequences, that gives the brain false feedback as to rightness of decision to take a short- cut," said Mullane. To fi ght against this, Mullane recommends organizations start by recognizing where the vulnerabilities lie, and taking the time to fi x them before they become a problem. All tasks should be approached in this order: safety, quality and then schedule, he said. Leaders need to ensure their teams maintain a best-practice level. They also should periodically re-set the best practices and review past failures to see what lessons can be learned. Before NASA, Mullane was a fl ight test weapon system operator. One day, Mullane and a pilot were conducting weapons testing in a F-111 fi ghter bomber when they reached a pre-calculated low-fuel point that indicates they are supposed to fl y home. They had just one more data point to collect and the pilot decided to keep going — and Mullane did not speak up. "What was going on in my brain? It was a sense that I didn't count, by virtue of position and longev- ity. I was the Goose, I had 30 minutes of fl ying time in the plane, he was the aircraft commander, he had hundreds of hours of fl ying time in the plane, so my concern of what he was doing was tempered by 'He has to know better than me,'" said Mullane. But the plane ended up crashing and Mullane and the pilot were almost killed. Organizations need to let all workers at all levels know their voice counts. If they see something unsafe happening — even if it's by a leader or manager — they need to speak up and take personal respon- sibility and accountability for safety, said Mullane. At age 14, Mullane decided he wanted to be an astronaut. He did not have exceptional grades or special connections; he had to work very hard to achieve his dream. Setting goals takes guts, Mullane said, but it's important to always be stepping out of your comfort zone. When one safety goal is achieved, set another one, he recommends. "Celebrate your safety accomplishments, but never say 'This is game over,'" he said. "Safety isn't a fi nal destination, it's a continuous journey." View from the top Three CEOs who are passionate about workplace health and safety participated in a roundtable discussion at Partners in Prevention 2014, Canada's largest health and safety conference and trade show, on April 29 in Mississauga, Ont. The CEOs discussed a variety of topics including how safety professionals can convince their CEOs to buy into health and safety. It all starts with more education around safety to change a CEO's mind set, said Peter Van Stralen, president and CEO of Sunshine Brands in Orangeville, Ont. The predominant mind set in business today is one that sees people as an expense, rather than an investment, he said. "We tell every- one if you look at it properly, work with people, care about them, build people up in your company, they become really one of a company's only appreciating assets — assets that appreciate in value over time," said Van Stralen. He recommends health and safety professionals try to get CEOs to under- stand what having employees off work means to them from a dollars-and-cents perspective. "(They may be) looking at everything on a spreadsheet as opposed to real people. You need to make the fi nancial case to them. Present scenarios of what it will cost you if something goes wrong. Some people only get money and you need to speak their language," he said. It may also be effective to explain what effect the loss of a worker would have on their brand. "Business people, money people, they get that. They get the value of a brand. What happens if something goes wrong? How does that look to your brand?" said Van Stralen. A commitment to health and safety starts with an organization's values, so OHS professionals need to make sure their CEO has safety as a value, said Mike Reinders, president of Maple Reinders Constructors in Mississauga, Ont. "I would challenge that CEO about his values. Maybe he has safety as a stated value, but let's dig deeper here, what really are your values?" he said. "If the leader is not going to push certain values, those values will disappear, disintegrate." But most importantly, you cannot give up, said Harry Oshanski, president and CEO of Casino Rama in Orillia, Ont. "I had a CEO where it just wasn't that important to him and I came at it from a fi nancial approach, from the employee engagement and customer side of it. It's a very challenging situation to be in, to change the opinion of the CEO," he said. "You need to be relentless." Your Comprehensive OHS Resource Are You Ready for Mandatory OHS Training Requirements in Force on July 1, 2014? ohscomply.com Online Training Mike Mullane Harry Oshanski, Mike Reinders and Peter Van Stralen