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Interview with Mousa Sharifi – WHS compliance

International Standards Certification’s Regional Manager, Mousa Sharifi, talks to AMSJ about compliance and the new national WHS legislation.

What is the number one safety compliance issue you see recurring in workplaces across the country?

Education is the singular best way to ensure employees are compliant. And it doesn’t cost a lot. It could be a monthly meeting, tool box meeting or something similar. It’s a low cost way of ensuring compliance, not just passing on information. You must follow employees to ensure safety training is being incorporated daily into the workplace. Making sure employees know their responsibilities is crucial. Accidents can be prevented if everyone in the company is aware of the safety issues. If they work together as a team to make the workplace safer they can definitely reduce accidents.

Do you think current national WHS compliance laws are in touch with what’s really happening at the coal face of industry?

In your opinion what is the consensus across the mining industry and across industry in general? I believe the existing national legislation is good as a management system approach involving mitigation, identification and monitoring. I think that, in most things, the legislation is very close to what is actually happening in the workplace. And if there are gaps, the legislation is flexible enough that it can be improved in the future. Legislation is subject to review from time to time and if there are gaps they can be addressed.

However legislation is not the only thing. It is the responsibility of the organisation to implement their own WHS management system. They need to go behind the legislation and identify and plan for all safety issues, customised for their particular business and industry sector.

Last year the federal government introduced new national health and safety legislation aimed at standardising safety compliance across the country. What do you see as the biggest benefit to industry?

The first and biggest benefit I see is the new legislation providing labour mobility by providing the continuity of licensing and training across the states. So people don’t have to re-train every time they move interstate. The new legislation provides flexibility for workers and contractors to travel and work anywhere across the country. The second benefit I see is the new laws provide greater consistency, certainty and clarity across all of Australia, and make it easier to understand WHS issues. Also businesses that operate across several states are now able to develop nationwide safety policies and procedures.

The Victorian Government has stated that they will not sign up to the new WHS legislation, although they remain committed to harmonisation. What is the biggest obstacle to the Victorian Government signing up to the new national health and safety legislation? How will this affect safety compliance nationally?

The Victorian guidance material is designed to inform duty holders as to how they can comply with State OHS legislation, whereas the new national WHS guidelines have no legal statute in Victoria.

The Victorian Government believes Victorian businesses will face additional costs of $3-$4 billion in the next five years under the new national legislation. They think that this reform will take the state backwards and affect productivity of small business. Something interesting that we really should keep in mind is that Victoria already has the safest and most effective system in place. They have the lowest rate of workplace injuries of all the states. However we hope that the Victorian Government will reconsider their position. It will be reviewed again probably in 2014. We hope the Victorian Government will sign up to the new WHS legislation then.

What old, out-dated belief systems do you believe are holding industry back from improving safety?

One of the most out-dated concepts in health and safety is that, some people think that experienced people know everything or that safety is a matter of common sense. So amongst employees and employers there is a perception that both understand health and safety as a matter of common sense. But it’s not true. We only have to be reminded that we all have electricity in our homes as a hazard, and we interact with this risk every day, and most days we forget the risk of electric shock and how fatal it is, so it’s not just common sense. That’s the reason they forget to report incidents and near misses. They need to know that most of the accidents that happen in the workplace happen to the professionals, not the fresh employees so they need to report all incidences and near misses and they need to learn from those, even if they think it is very common and simple.

What are the key differences between a WHS management system that ensures compliance, and one that doesn’t? What should WHS managers be on the look-out for?

A system of approach to effective management of health and safety can bring enormous benefit to employees and employers. A management system is not just about having some papers and folders together. I have seen some companies that have some folders and they have some documentation and they think they are compliant. It’s not true. From time to time we need to update them and we need to review them. After that we need to update people on the changes. We need to establish a WHS management system using a method called PDCA:

P – Plan our management system
D – Do what it says – implement it
C – Check it, then, if it’s not working very well we need to take;
A – Action

Safety is about people, and people hold a myriad of viewpoints based on past experiences, cultural conditioning, peer group attitudes, and their relationship with authority figures. How can a single administrative/management system possibly hope to address so many personal, emotional and psychological variations as a one-size-fits- all solution?

The success of a management system lies in the approach. Individuals are all different in terms of their level of ability, their level of intelligence, concentration patterns and certain types of behaviour, however there are some traits that are common to almost all people in a given set of circumstances. That’s why we need to discourage risk-taking behaviour. However accidents are not always just caused by risk-taking behaviour. People learn to make educated guesses. They think they can get away with taking the risk both in the workplace and other parts of their life. So we need to encourage the individual to behave safely and that’s the manager’s responsibility. Managers need to encourage safe behaviour, by using a number of different methods, like for example, using a combination of training and feedback. If they just do the training – that’s not enough. You need to monitor their performances and give them feedback on an individual basis, one by one.

Another recommendation to managers I would make is that they need to change work situations and work employment from time to time. Research shows that when workers perform a routine task, they become less vigilant and their concentration becomes less. So to reduce the risk of accidents, managers need to schedule regularly, through the working day, some time out and consider changing the location and line of work if possible.

“The Victorian Government believes Victorian businesses will face additional costs of $3-$4 billion in next five years under the new national legislation.”

Mousa Sharifi

MOUSA SHARIFI

Mousa Sharifi was special guest speaker at the SAFETY IN ACTION exhibition held in Melbourne from 19-21 March.

Mousa currently works as the Regional Manager at ISC, Sydney, and was previously Managing Director for Kranz Quantative Research as well as representative of ISC Iran.

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