Friday 28th April is World Day for Safety and Health at Work and Workers’ Memorial Day.  It is a day to remember those who have died at work and think about how our actions can prevent future work-related deaths, injuries and illnesses.  Refer to the Safe Work Australia website for more information.

Embedding a 'safety culture' in an organisation is a difficult thing to do, especially if there are no pressing external drivers. The lonely person who is designated to be the workplace 'health and safety' officer or even the elected Health and Safety Representative or Health and Safety Committee member in a school can feel like a salmon swimming against the overwhelming flow of student duty of care and child protection issues. The average health and safety designate dashes from issue to issue in a reactive way and hopes that nothing large crops up that will cause a serious injury which will bring down the investigative and prosecutorial force of the Worksafe agency. When control measures are developed, they are often ignored because they don’t quite fit into other prerogatives.

Clearly, that is far from ideal in terms of a school’s obligations to look after its students and staff. So does  creating a 'safety culture' mean changing the salmon and stream metaphor into a boat flowing on a river in the same direction, or is it part of the river itself?

Going behind the slogan, what exactly is a 'safety culture' in a school?

Being realistic, this does not mean absolutely no injuries and total safety. The overlap between workplace safety with student duty of care means that there will always be some risk, but the hazard causing the risk must be identified and, where it is not reasonably practicable to eliminate the hazard, it must be managed.

Having as many people as possible in a school involved in not only identifying hazards but looking for solutions to find the 'best reasonably practicable' solution seems a good way of defining a safety culture, rather than leaving safety implementation to the lonely salmon. While the logic seems sound, it is clear that following such a path can also lead to duplication, inappropriate responses, general waste and, for those of us who like to dramatise, ending in total anarchy.

So how can we obtain the benefits of many brains without running amok?

Some light is cast from Amy Edmonson's (Harvard Business School) research on innovation and high performing teams. I use this example because cultural change, such as creating a 'safety culture' is innovation. And because safety is not a standalone, developing the same values and processes for all work-related activities is aimed at creating high performing teams.

Amy Edmondson found that high performing teams collaborate and learn together in identifying issues and solving them together. Interestingly she found that teams that reported the most “mistakes” in their processes and then went on to solve them had the best overall results.

Not all identification of mistakes or potential mistakes leads to taking ownership of solutions; not all teams collaborate. One factor that is important in fostering collaboration is 'psychological safety' (article by Tim Austin). This means that a person feels safe in bringing up issues or 'mistakes' so that they can be addressed.  Following the Royal Commission into Institutional Child Abuse, psychological safety is now a concept well-understood when it comes to reporting child abuse. In the context of safety, knowing what to report and what to aim for in finding solutions requires leadership both at the team level – Heads of Department or Year, as well as leadership and support from those with specific expertise, and those with the ultimate means of resourcing change – Principals, Boards, and Business Managers.

Where should a school start?

Naturally training in workplace health and safety is a very basic first step. Everyone must know what a hazard is, understand why you need to assess the risk arising from a hazard (likelihood, consequences, control effectiveness) and how to approach identifying appropriate controls (the hierarchy of controls).

Be explicit in expecting high standards. Let it be understood that your school should be a safe place for everyone and that includes both the health and safety of staff, as well as the health and safety of students (also known as student duty of care).

The next step is having a simple and straightforward way of notifying hazards, injuries, and near misses. Online reporting systems which can be used from a mobile phone, tablet or desktop beat paper systems hands down.  They encourage immediate reporting rather than 'leakage' when people have to remember when they go back to their desks or have to search for the right form (and then give it to the right person). Online systems also make analysis of hazards, incidents and near misses as easy as clicking, for immediate collation of results, such as falls down a particular set of stairs, or back injuries or even stress claims.  Reporting is to be encouraged and not seen as being troublemakers or whiners. Identifying hazards before they cause an injury is to be rewarded.

And finding solutions is everyone’s business. Teams closest to the hazard should work out collaboratively what is possible and what is reasonable and then implement it.  If it works, then pass the knowledge on to other teams. If you can’t work it out within your team, throw it open to others. Issues like how to communicate during an evacuation or planning and managing excursions or managing contractors can almost always be done better when exposed to the collective wisdom and experience.

If your school is already engaging in collaborative problem-solving with teachers, this will be a base on which to build your health and safety awareness. If your school has not yet used this approach to identifying and solving problems/issues/challenges, this is an excellent opportunity to innovate, and not just with improving health and safety, but also with its close relative, student duty of care, and any other matters which can be reviewed and improved.

References:

Austin, Tim  Making It Safe: The Importance of Psychological Safety

Edmondson, A (2013) Teaming to Innovate  Jossey-Bass, San Francisco

Hanna, Julia  Turning Employees Into Problem Solvers  Working Knowledge  Harvard Business School, 30 August 2012