Transcript Self Insurers of South Australia Conference

Self Insurers of South Australia
Conference - Closing the Loop
Closing Compliance Gaps
Dr Len Gainsford
Today’s Program
•
A behavioural explanation of the management of an organisation’s
OHSW and workplace injury policies and procedures.
•
An approach to Occupational Health Safety and Welfare through the
lens of generational change and interpretive understandings.
•
Conclusions.
OHSW and Workplace Injury Policies and Procedures
• “The primary objective for WorkCover is to provide an effective and
efficient system that helps employers and employees work together to
get the best results in health, safety, rehabilitation and claims
management and to achieve continuous improvement in these
disciplines.”
WorkCoverSA (2008) Performance Standards for Self-Insured Employers
• Management of an organisation’s OHSW and workplace injury
policies and procedures involves addressing the individual and
collective behaviours of people, especially at work.
OHSW and Workplace Injury Policies and Procedures
Related concepts are:
• Safety management, safety systems and safety culture (Hudson, 1999;
Reason, 2000)
• Collective mindfulness (Hopkins, 2000; Weick & Sutcliffe, 2001)
• Risk awareness (Hopkins, 2005)
Safety Management
“Most people see safety as concerned primarily with the personal
well-being of stakeholders, by which I mean all those involved,
not just the immediate actors and owners. Some also add the
integrity of the business and its assets. While these are
necessary preconditions, I view safety and more specifically
safety management, in a more active way. I see the creation of a
safe environment as allowing dangerous activities to take
place successfully, which means without harm or damage”.
Hudson (1999)
Safety Systems and Safety Culture
“[There is a] widely spread misconception...that somehow
systems sit apart from culture. It is this belief that drives managers’
over-reliance on systems on the one hand, and an insufficient
understanding of, and emphasis on, workplace culture, on the other.
They believe, mistakenly, that compliance with such rules and
procedures can be achieved simply by the imposition of systems,
while ignoring the crucial cultural dimension.”
Reason (2000)
Collective Mindfulness
Collective mindfulness (Hopkins, 2000) requires:
• Operator error is not an adequate explanation for major accidents.
• Systemic hazard identification is vital for accident prevention.
• Corporate headquarters should maintain safety departments which
can exercise effective control over the management of major
hazards.
• All major changes, both organisational and technical, must be
subject to careful risk assessment.
Collective Mindfulness (cont’d)
Collective mindfulness (Hopkins, 2000) requires:
• Alarm systems must be carefully designed so that warnings of
trouble do not get dismissed as normal (normalised).
• Front-line operators must be provided with appropriate supervision
and backup from technical experts.
• Routine reporting systems must highlight safety-critical information.
Collective Mindfulness (cont’d)
• Communication between shifts must highlight safety-critical
information.
• Incident-reporting systems must specify relevant warning signs. They
should provide feedback to reporters and an opportunity for reporters
to comment on feedback.
• Reliance on lost-time injury data in major hazard industries is itself a
major hazard.
Collective Mindfulness (cont’d)
• A focus on safety culture can distract attention from the management of
major hazards.
• Maintenance cutbacks foreshadow trouble.
• Auditing must be good enough to identify the bad news and ensure it
gets to the top.
• Companies should apply the lessons of other disasters.
Risk Awareness
• Risk awareness (Hopkins, 2005) arises “from the impossibility of
devising a set of safety rules which adequately covers every
situation”.
• Risk awareness must operate at both the organisational and
individual level.
• “The state of mind where we are constantly aware of the
possibility of injury and act accordingly at all times” (Minerals Council
of Australia).
• “Step back five” – the idea that before starting a new job, the
employee should take 5 steps back and take 5 minutes to think
about what might go wrong and how this might be avoided.
OHSW: Injury Management Culture and Climate
• A documented program is in place that defines OHSW and injury
management behaviours. The behaviours are understood by all
measured, reviewed, analysed and actioned.
• The program has objectives, targets and performance indicators in
line with standard 2.1.3, consistent with the policy objectives of
OHSW and injury management.
• The program’s objectives, targets and performance indicators are
maintained and monitored, in line with standard 4.1.
• The program’s objectives, targets and performance indicators are
reviewed, analysed and any deficiencies corrected, in line with
standard 5.2.
WorkCoverSA (2008) Performance standards for self-insured employers
Self Insurers of SA Inc Annual Report 2008-09
Evaluation Outcomes
• The evaluation process has become more onerous and focussed
on compliance.
• This has led to higher levels of asserted non-conformances and a
rapidly increasing frequency of level 1 outcomes under the natural
consequences model.
• This trend has brought with it heightened concerns that the growing
compliance focus is undermining the value of the performance
standards for self insurers, which are focussed on management
systems and continuous improvement.
Organisational Safety Culture
• A reporting culture (e.g. preparedness to and the acceptability of
reporting errors).
• A just culture (handling duty, responsibility, blame and punishment).
• A learning culture (ability to change on the basis of lessons learned).
• A flexible culture (varied decision-making processes, depending on
the urgency of the decision and the expertise of the people
involved).
Reason (1997)
Safety Culture Types (Oil and Gas Industry)
•
Pathological (nobody is informed, no trust, blaming, punishing, denial of wrong
doing, dangerous and messy workplace).
•
Reactive (management demands data on OHSW failures, safety hot issue only after
accident, workforce held responsible, basic legal requirements met, taking safety
seriously not believed).
•
Calculative (management command and control, lots of OHSW stats, workforce not
understanding problems, safety targets not challenged).
•
Proactive (management seeks views, encourages feedback, workforce
involvement, management knows risks, safety priority over production).
•
Generative (management participates/shares activities, management
has to fix systemic failures/workforce has to identify them, management cares).
Hudson (1999)
Corporate Culture
Corporate Culture (Schein,1992) is:
•
A pattern of basic assumptions, invented, discovered or developed
by a given group as it learns to cope with its problems of external
adaptation and internal integration.
•
A group’s shared values consist of goals and concerns that shape a
sense of “what ought to be”.
•
While an organisation’s policies and procedures tend to be at the
“surface” or “more visible” level, culture lies at a “deeper” or “less
visible” level.
Compliance Climate
• Conditions that affect compliance in the workplace.
• Directly influenced by organisational structure, policies and
management.
• Perceptions of employees regarding compliance and their work
environment.
• Measured through employee descriptions of how frequently they
observe certain compliance conditions to be met in their workplace.
Compliance Motivations
• Economic – maximising a person’s own economic or material utility.
• Social – a commitment to earning the respect of significant people
with whom the person interacts.
• Normative – the person obeys because of a sense of moral
agreement with the specific regulation or a generalised sense of
moral duty to comply with regulation.
Cultural Change
Most businesses would recognise that whereas “surface” arrangements
(such as parts of OHSW compliance programs) can be changed
relatively easily, values-based behaviours, giving rise to “deeper” and
hopefully more sustainable forms of compliance, may take longer.
Compliance Programs
Training Programs
Budgets
Monitoring
Certification
Behaviours
Values
Symbols
Myths
Legends
Laughlin’s (1987) Change Model
Lifeworld –
Interpretative
Schemes
Steering
Media –
Design
Archetypes
Systems
Guided by
Design
Archetypes
Money, Power
Responsibilities
Compliance
Program
Managerial
decision
making
behaviour
“Evolution”
Values,Culture
“Colonisation”
Compliance
Culture
Compliance Gaps
• Compliance gaps emerge when an organisation’s compliance
regime fails by falling short of the required regulatory goals.
• Failure happens when organisational policies and procedures, which
are put in place to ensure that laws are not broken, do not work.
• Compliance regime failures may happen regularly.
• Compliance gaps emerge through interpretive differences between
an organisation’s compliance statements (such as those found in
the organisation’s Annual Report) and compliance behaviour by
individuals in that organisation.
• They are where the compliance behavioural reality doesn’t
match the corporate rhetoric.
Compliance Gap Relationships
Closing Compliance Gaps – a start
1. Discover what the organisation intends to do with its compliance.
2. Express that intention in clearly enunciated words.
3. Make sure the words are correctly contextualised, with particular
meaning.
4. Test that meaning with employees expected to act on compliance.
5. Adjust the words and expression in organisational compliance
statements.
Closing Compliance Gaps – a start (cont’d)
6. Test again the meaning with employees expected to act on
compliance.
7. Measure and chart the differences in outcomes between steps 4
and 6.
6. Measure individual behaviour against meanings in compliance
statements.
7. Following measurement, discuss and adjust compliance
statements.
6. Repeat steps 1 through 10.
Compliance Gap Dimensions
Regulator Priorities (Parker, 2010)
• Formal – laws and regulations, resource allocations.
• Informal – interest group pressures, media, social attitudes, political
requirements, values.
• Certainty and stability.
• Accountability and transparency.
• Procedural fairness.
• Proportionality, consistency and rationality.
• Public value – enforcement agency effectiveness in achieving
regulation through efficiency, clarity, predictability, flexibility,
responsiveness and timeliness.
Regulatory Mix – Punishment/Persuasion
• Co-operative approach – regulated entity given time to address compliance
gaps.
• Deterrence requires dealing more harshly with compliance gaps, leading
ultimately to prosecution.
• Over-emphasis by a regulator on deterrence may encourage behaviours e.g.
employees not disclosing potential legal breaches.
• SISA has “called on regulators to scan the environment before embarking
on any major review or change project and coordinate their initiatives”
Robin Shaw, SISA Annual Report 2008-09.
• “Behaviour and culture do not lend themselves all that well to the
regulator’s black and white view of the world. The degree of trust
required to pursue cultural and behavioural objectives does not come
easily to the traditional regulator”.
Compliers Becoming Non-Compliers
• Employees of the regulated entity are believed by a regulator to be
deliberately not complying, when in fact it is their confusion or
misunderstanding of organisational compliance statements which
leads to non-complying behaviour.
• Employees may wish to comply, but they do not understand when
they are “doing wrong”.
• It is important to see whether 3 processes are already in place –
communicating meaning, adjusting wording in compliance
statements and testing of understanding.
• Absence of these processes will make it difficult to manage
compliance gaps.
Generational Change
• The impact of generational change on diversity and leadership and
admired leadership characteristics (Zemke, 2000; Conger, 2001;
Arsenault, 2004; Yu and Miller, 2005).
• The effects of generational change on the management of
Occupational Health Safety and Welfare.
• “Baby Boomers” born 1946 to 1961, “Generation X” born 1962 to
1977 and “Generation Y” born 1978 to 1993.
Leadership
• Leaders can mobilise the energies of followers by appealing to
followers’ moral values, raising followers’ awareness of ethical
issues and encouraging followers to rise above self-interest for the
sake of a greater good (Burns, 1978).
• Leaders may be labelled “transformers”, to the extent that they
articulate a compelling vision based on shared values, inspire
followers to act and empower followers to move the vision into
reality.
• Better quality leader-follower relationships are characterised by
mutual support and respect, loyalty, affection and are often
associated with followers having greater autonomy to make
decisions.
Baby Boomers (1946 to 1961)
• Achievement comes after “paying dues”
• Value commitment and loyalty (particularly to corporations)
• Belief in sacrifice to achieve success
• View work as process oriented
• Value teamwork and group discussions
• Accountability – “organisational loyalty”
Generation X (1962 to 1977)
• Do not believe in “paying dues”
• Value autonomy and independence
• Thrive on open communication
• View work as “action oriented”
• Seek out the “whys” in issues
• Loyal to individuals not corporations
• Accountability – “transparency”
Generation Y (1978 to 1993)
• Strong work ethic, entrepreneurial spirit and sense of social
responsibility.
• Blends collaboration, networking and interdependence to achieve
goals.
• Comfortable with change and thrives on monitoring and coaching.
• Highly educated and “tech savvy”.
• Likes a more open and tolerant society.
• Accountability – “social responsibility”.
Generational Differences
• Value systems are different between Boomers and Xers, to the point
where “Xers have broken the traditional Maslow hierarchy needs rule
and have challenged individual development process schemes” on
the basis of insufficient recognition of the diversity of organisational
interests and leadership legitimacy.
• Whereas Boomers start “from education, career, marriage, promotion
(and then move) towards self-achievement”, “Xers squeeze the
process together” to achieve “self actualisation” (Argyris & Schon, 1978),
but at the same time not allowing work itself to negatively effect
their quality of life.
Generational Differences (cont’d)
• Arsenault (2004) finds that generation Y takes the Xers’ quality of life
position further, through seeing work as a legitimate means of
achieving greater societal & corporate goals.
• For generation Y, occupational performance may not only include
carrying out compliance activities, it may be a means to demonstrate
societal values-in-action.
• The oldest generation Y person turned 30 in 2008, which is the
current average age of an Australian woman having a child.
• Newer generations – Zed (born 1994 to 2009) & Alpha (born
2010 to 2025).
Accountability
• A relationship involving the giving and demanding of reasons for
conduct; reciprocity in rights and obligations (Roberts & Scapens, 1985).
• “The principle of accountability is primarily concerned with the
process whereby organisations and the individuals within them are
responsible for their decisions and actions and how they submit
themselves to appropriate external scrutiny” (Victorian Public Accounts
and Estimates Committee, 2005).
• Defining roles and responsibilities provides a mechanism to clearly
assign accountability to those responsible for carrying out a task
at all levels of the organisation (Zachary, 2005).
Questions to Consider
• How is “accountability” expressed in your organisation’s policies and
procedures?
• What training do you provide to help people understand your
organisation’s need for accountability?
• Do you have different generational understandings on who is
responsible for the identification, reporting and/or treatment of
compliance breaches?
Conclusions
• Management of an organisation’s OHSW and workplace injury
policies and procedures involves addressing the individual and
collective behaviours of people, especially at work.
• Most businesses would recognise that whereas “surface”
arrangements (such as parts of OHSW compliance programs) can
be changed relatively easily, values-based behaviours, giving rise to
“deeper” and hopefully more sustainable forms of compliance, may
take longer.
• Compliance gaps are where the compliance behavioural reality
doesn’t match the corporate rhetoric – this should be addressed.