IDRL 308 Unit 3

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Athabasca University, Calgary *

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308

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Management

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Feb 20, 2024

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Introduction In addition to identifying and control workplace hazards, OHS practitioners engage in a variety of other organizational activities designed to prevent and respond to injuries and ill health. Interventions such as training, behaviour modification, emergency planning, incident investigation, and disability management round out the OHS function. Training is often cast as a panacea for all manner of organizational problems, including injuries. This perspective tends to attribute all problems to ignorance and miscommunication. While this is sometimes the case, workers and employers can also have conflicting interests—an issue that training (and communications, more broadly) cannot resolve. In reading about these interventions, keep in mind that the interests of employers and workers are not always perfectly aligned, and this can lead to conflict and resistance. After completing this unit, you should be able to answer the following questions: 1. What factors affect the effectiveness of training? 2. Can safety be improved by modifying workers’ behaviours? What are the risks of this approach? 3. What are the challenges associated with emergency planning? 4. What is the purpose of and what are the steps in incident investigation? 5. What conflicts underlie disability management programs? 6. Why might workers and employers have different perspectives on return to work programs? Lesson 3.1 – Training and Injury Prevention Reading Assignment Chapter 8, Foster & Barnetson textbook Please look at the reading for this lesson before delving into the Lesson Notes. Questions to Guide Your Reading 1. What are the purposes of OHS training? To control workplace hazards by providing workers with the knowledge, skills or behaviours to reduce the risk of a workplace injury. T ensure that work is

performed safely in the workplace and minimize the risks posed and harm caused by workplace hazards 2. What are the steps to planning an OHS training system? P172-73 Needs assessment to determine what kind of training is needed to meet organizational goals such as meeting legislative requirements of seeking to reduce injury rates, enhancing organizations reputation for safety. Planning the training program by identifying objectives and outcomes, best methods of instructions and by identifying trainers. Then the training program is implemented 3. What is the difference between training and learning? Learning is the process wherein we acquire knowledge and skills that can lead to behavioural change—is an important outcome of training. Training is the formal or informal method of of providing workers with the knowledge, skills and behaviours to reduce the risk of workplace injury. 4. What is an emergency, and how does emergency preparedness reduce injury? Emergencies are sudden events that pose a hazard to workers health and safety and require immediate action. Reduces injury by identifying what hazards might trigger and emergency in the workplace, consider how each cause (internal or external) might affect the workplace and consider how the underlying hazards can be controlled. This leads to the development of one or more emergency plans that outline steps necessary to respond effectively. All workers need to know what to do and where to go in the event of an emergency., emergency responders required additional training to spot hazards and respond. 5. What are the phases of an emergency plan? Activation: It is necessary for someone to recognize that an emergency is occurring, activate the emergency plan, and communicate the emergency to workers and any relevant authorities or other affected persons. An activation protocol may identify the circumstances that create an emergency (e.g., triggering events or circumstances) and the steps to commence the emergency response. Evacuation, rescue, or shelter: Emergencies may require the evacuation of some or all workers. Evacuation routes (including alternative routes), muster points, and a means of determining whether an evacuation is complete are important components of an emergency plan.

Depending upon the circumstances, an evacuation plan may also direct the shutdown of certain work processes and the treatment or further evacuation of injured workers. Some hazards— such as chemical hazards in confined spaces—may require specialized rescue skills or equipment in order to evacuate workers before further harm occurs. Other hazards—such as extreme weather—may require workers to take shelter on site. Ongoing management: A protocol for managing an ongoing emergency is helpful once the initial phase of the emergency has passed. While we tend to think of emergencies as single dramatic events, an emergency may entail an ongoing set of events such as the pandemic discussed in Box 8.5. Ongoing management might include plans to secure equipment and information, ensuring there is a means of communicating with staff and for staff to communicate with their families, a media relations plan, the provision of assistance to help employees cope with their reactions to the event, and a business-resumption plan. Lesson Notes Training is a central requirement in OHS. Knowledgeable workers are less likely to be injured. But as the assigned chapter notes, there is more to training than meets the eye. Most OHS training focuses on teaching workers specific skills and behaviours that allow them to work more safely. Less often (and usually delivered by unions) is training aimed at informing workers about their safety rights at work. The latter is generally not in the employer’s interest. Much of contemporary safety training is rooted in the model of behaviour-based safety, as was discussed in Lesson 1.3. It is anchored in a belief that workers are the cause of most incidents, and therefore the best way to reduce them is to train the “bad” behaviour out of workers. Focusing so heavily on workers’ actions risks losing sight of more structural and systemic problems in the workplace. Behaviour-based safety is also more likely to overlook hazards that lead to occupational disease—as these rarely can be fixed by altering worker behaviour. Not to mention, this approach overlooks the employer’s role in ensuring a safe workplace. Focusing so heavily on workers’ actions risks losing sight of more structural and systemic problems in the workplace. Recognizing both the importance of training but also its complexity, the chapter does not offer specific training tips and strategies. Instead it attempts to offer learning and instructional design

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principles that can guide you in creating a training program that reflects the realities of your specific workplace and/or safety needs. The chapter also touches upon emergency preparedness. In a way, emergency plans are a form of training in that they ensure workers know what to do, and when. The need for emergency plans should be self-evident, as they mitigate potential harm to workers (and the public). Emergency plans will be specific to the conditions and hazards associated with the work being performed and might have to be re-worked frequently if the work changes often. Learning Exercise Spend some time online researching the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic that struck Canada in 2002 (there are many useful reports and timelines available). Write 100- word answers to each of the following questions: 1. Was the health care system adequately prepared for this emergency? 2. What do experts think were the shortcomings of the emergency plan? 3. What changes have been made since the outbreak to improve response to epidemics? Lesson 3.2 – Incident Investigation Reading Assignment Chapter 9, Foster & Barnetson textbook Please look at the reading for this lesson before delving into the Lesson Notes. Questions to Guide Your Reading 1. What is an incident, and what are the steps of incident investigation? An incident is any situation that can cause workplace injuries and illnesses and includes major and minor injuries as well as near misses, and incident investigations are intended to uncover al of the key facts about how and why an incident occurred so that action can be taken to prevent it happening again. The steps of an investigation includes a consistent process designed to uncover what happened, needs to be performed as soon after the incident as possible and completed as quickly as possible. The first step is the development of an investigative process and takes place before an event has occurred, identifies key questions such as types of incidents that trigger investigations, who leads and who

participates, how will info be recorded, what tools and training are needed and procedures to be followed. Once an incident occurs first step is to attend to injured workers, evacuate workers and secure the scene, should correspond with emergency response plan. 2 nd step is to gather evidence using walk throughs which is an inspection of the scene to get an overall picture of the environment and may include recording through photos, video or drawings to create a record of the scene. Next interviewing witnesses including injured workers asap to preserve recall while memories are fresh and uncontaminated by discussing the event with others. May involve re-enactment of the incident. 3 rd step is to analyze data to determine the causes (proximate AND root causes) 2. What factors should be considered in an incident investigation? Investigations need to be performed as soon after the incident as possible and be completed as quickly as possible. Witnesses’ recall may deteriorate over time and important evidence may disappear if there is a delay. The sooner an investigation is completed, the sooner changes can be made to make the worksite safer. Employers may also be required to report incidents and investigation results within a specified time period. The steps of an investigation includes a consistent process designed to uncover what happened, needs to be performed as soon after the incident as possible and completed as quickly as possible. No one should investigate an incident alone, and other people should be selected to assist, to provide different perspectives, and to divide the workload. Other possible participants should include joint OHS committee members or some other worker representative, people linked to the work that had been performed, and, in most cases, the direct supervisor of the work (although there are cases when inclusion of the supervisor may not be appropriate). Union agreements often stipulate that a union steward or representative participate in incident investigations—one of the ways in which the presence of a union alters OHS in a workplace. Anyone who is identified as an investigator should be properly trained beforehand. 3. Why is it important to search for root cause, and why can it be hard to do? It is crucial in incident investigation to differentiate between root and proximate cause. It is the goal of investigations to establish root cause. Unfortunately, too often investigations only identify proximate causes. The core principle of root-cause analysis is that no incident is ever caused by a single action or factor but, instead, occurs as a result of a combination of factors, many of which may have appeared long before the incident itself. , injury and ill health are caused by a broader spectrum of factors than is generally

accepted, including the work relationship, gender, and race. The data analysis phase of incident investigation must include techniques that reveal all causal factors and their interconnection to the incident. A broader concern about investigation models is that they tend to live up to the maxim that you tend to find what you’d looking for.7 More specifically, most models identify several categories of potential causal factors (e.g., human, technology, organization, and information) that an investigator should explore when investigating an incident. Not surprisingly, the causes the investigator eventually identifies tend to fall into those categories. This, in turn, shapes the incident prevention recommendations because, as the saying goes, you fix the problems that you find. This focus on categories of causes means investigators tend to become preoccupied with the events and factors leading up to the events (i.e., the parts) while ignoring the broader dynamics that gave rise to the incident (i.e., the whole). incident investigation, like all areas of OHS, is shaped by the competing interests in the workplace. In practice, there is an ongoing tension in investigations between finding readily identifiable issues that can be fixed and identifying structural factors that contribute to incidents. It is in employers’ financial interests to keep the causal chain short and the investigation tightly focused on specific issues. Examining how employer decisions about the design and management of work contribute to incidents threatens management control of the work process and entails more costly changes. More concretely, it is easier for employers to resolve an issue by placing a new guard on a saw blade than it is to recognize that the profit or cost containment imperative drives employers to organize work in ways that compromise workers’ safety 4. What should be the goals of recommendations arising from an investigation? The incident report will be the permanent record of the incident and its causes and thus should clearly outline what happened and why it happened. It may even have future legal ramifications, as its recommendations may be used by government inspectors to determine if an employer met the standard of due diligence in controlling hazards after the incident. Incident reports can take different forms depending on context, organization, and situation. All incident reports should include the following elements: •Who performed the investigation •Details of the incident, including date, time, persons involved, outcomes •Details of the investigation and how it was conducted, timelines, etc. •An outline of the factors that led up to the incident

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•Clear identification of the root causes of the incident •Specific recommendations designed to prevent future incidents To elicit action, recommendations need to be specific and directed to the identified causes. Nevertheless, if they are too specific, they risk not addressing systemic issues adequately. The recommended action also needs to be within the control of the employer. This can be difficult when environmental conditions played an important role in the incident. There is also the issue of how to report on the role of human error in the incident. The goal of an incident investigation is to prevent future incidents rather than attribute blame. But what happens when human error, either on the part of a worker or management, is identified as a key factor in the incident? If human error is relevant it needs to be included in the report. To leave it out would be to distort what happened and undermine the effectiveness of the report. The key is how to report the role of human error. role of human error. First, the report should never recommend discipline or reprimand. That is not the purpose of the investigation. Once the investigation is complete, an employer can separately consider whether discipline is warranted. Second, the report should outline as objectively and neutrally as possible the course of events in order to prevent implied blame. The report should indicate the context for the failure. It can do this by reporting on why the error was made (e.g., lack of training, time pressures, unclear procedures) or by referring to broader dynamics in the workplace (e.g., lack of priority given to safety). The recommendations should not single out a person or persons for corrective action. corrective action. For example, saying “Joe needs more training” will be less effective at making the workplace safer than recommending “refresher training on deep fryer safety procedures should be provided to all kitchen staff.” The latter phrasing recognizes that a single error is indicative of broader systemic issues and thus addresses those systemic issues more directly. Lesson Notes The most challenging aspect of an incident investigation is properly ascertaining cause. Incident investigations are about identifying what went wrong that led to the incident so that it can be corrected to prevent future incidents. This simple goal can sometimes be challenging to achieve. There can be a complex combination of factors that led to the incident, some more visible than others. The most important factor may be a decision or action taken months or years before, or it might just have been a manifestation of a deeper systemic issue in the workplace. The most challenging aspect of an incident investigation is properly ascertaining cause.

Proximate cause—the event or condition that is immediately responsible—is usually fairly evident and investigators can get stuck at this point. But the proximate cause is rarely the only reason the incident occurred. An investigator needs to keep probing until they can uncover the root causes of the incident. Often this will be a combination of factors that reach far back through the operations of the workplace and the dynamics between parties. Of course, probing root cause may lead to findings that are uncomfortable for the employer – as it may lead to shortcomings in policy, failures in management oversight, or unwillingness to properly control hazards. In this fashion, incident investigations are just as embedded in the power dynamics of the employment relationship as any other aspect of OHS. Learning Exercise Read the scenario found on pages 198–199 of the textbook, and answer the three questions that follow. Lesson 3.3 – Disability Management and Return to Work Reading Assignment Chapter 10, Foster & Barnetson textbook Please look at the reading for this lesson before delving into the Lesson Notes. Questions to Guide Your Reading 1. Why are employers motivated to manage workers’ disabilities? 2. How might this motivation conflict with medically desirable accommodations? 3. What are the components of a disability management program? 4. When are return to work programs rehabilitative? When are they not? Lesson Notes Disability management has emerged as a practice out of employers’ interest in reducing the frequency of disability (through wellness programs and other initiatives) and the cost of disability (due to lost productivity, etc.). Their motivation has also been affected by the evolving legal obligations to accommodate workers with disabilities—known as the duty to accommodate. The assigned chapter walks through the requirements flowing from the duty and examines common practices developed to meet the duty, such as modified work and workplace modifications.

But the assigned chapter also shows that this area, too, can be embroiled in the inherent conflict between employers and workers. How far accommodation should extend, what is appropriate modification, what is considered a legitimate disability are all contested questions. Adding greater complexity is the role of government—through Human Rights Commissions—in determining when accommodation is required and what is appropriate. The controversy over drug and alcohol testing (highlighted in Box 10.2) is just one example of how the three parties have widely differing perspectives on the topic. Conflicts around appropriate modified work can be quite intense between workers and employers, usually with the WCB siding with the employer. Related to accommodation is return to work, which is lauded as a method to improve workers’ rehabilitation after an injury. However, the chapter reveals that, in practice, return to work can be much more conflicted and difficult. Employers are motivated to speed up return to work as they pay WCB premiums based upon time-loss claim rates. A not-fully-healed worker who can do something at work does not affect their premiums. As a result, return to work plans involve unrelated, demeaning or inappropriate work or, worse, work that exacerbates the injury. Conflicts around appropriate modified work can be quite intense between workers and employers, usually with the WCB siding with the employer. Learning Exercise Read the scenario described in Exercise B on page 217 of the textbook. Prepare a short answer to the question that follows. Review Questions Write two- to three-paragraph responses to each of the following questions from memory. When you can write reasonably detailed answers to each of the review questions found at the end of every unit, you will greatly improve your readiness for the Final Exam. 1. What factors affect the effectiveness of training? 2. What are the key components of an emergency plan? 3. What is the purpose of and what are the key steps in incident investigation? 4. Why can identifying root cause in an investigation be difficult? 5. What conflicts underlie disability management programs? 6. Why might return to work sometimes be detrimental to an injured worker’s health?

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Online Quiz 2 After you have completed all of the readings and learning activities in Unit 3, complete Online Quiz 2 found on the course homepage. This quiz comprises 20 multiple-choice questions and covers the material covered in Unit 3. This quiz is worth 10% of your final grade. Note: At this time you should be thinking about booking a time and place to write your final exam. Refer to the “Assignments and Final Examination” section of the Course Information for exam procedures.

IDRL 308 Unit 3

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