It encourages workers to view health and safety as a ‘core responsibility’ rather than just a legislative requirement’. It starts with the senior management’s commitment, from which flows the staff accountability. All of this is tied up tight through strong systems and processes. Technology can be very helpful in making the systems and processes easy and effective, while keeping your program alive. In fact, the use of technology can make the whole workplace operate efficiently with improved productivity.
A workplace can be best defined as one that starts with ‘I’ within the organization and moves along with ‘we’. It’s one where each individual in the organization feels responsible for workplace safety.
It encourages workers to view health and safety as a ‘core responsibility’ rather than just a legislative requirement’. It starts with the senior management’s commitment, from which flows the staff accountability. All of this is tied up tight through strong systems and processes. Technology can be very helpful in making the systems and processes easy and effective, while keeping your program alive. In fact, the use of technology can make the whole workplace operate efficiently with improved productivity.
This is how the UK Health and Safety Commission defines safety culture:
“The safety culture of an organization is the product of individual and group values, attitudes, perceptions, competencies, and patterns of behavior that determine the commitment to, and the style and proficiency of, an organization’s health and safety management. Organizations with a positive safety culture are characterized by communications founded on mutual trust, by shared perceptions of the importance of safety and by confidence in the efficacy of preventive measures”.
Let us first start by trying to understand due diligence with regards to occupational health and safety (OHS). Due diligence is about making sure you have done everything reasonable under the circumstances to mitigate risks to your workers at your workplace.
There are two things you need to note here right away:
The Protection of your workers is the major focus of due diligence. As an employer, once you do everything reasonable to protect the safety of your workers, you will likely be fine in the eyes of law.
However, the big question you must ask yourself at this stage is how good is ‘reasonable’ for building a safety culture? The answer is ‘not good enough’ on most occasions since an organization with a sustainable safety culture is expected to go beyond ‘reasonable’.
This brings us to the concept of ‘prevention’. Yes, if you go beyond reasonable, you are likely working on ‘prevention’ rather than ‘cure’ for your workers. Prevention is about not having an adverse thing happen at your workplace.
Prevention and due diligence are very close concepts, but have totally different meanings. They are like chalk and cheese. They look the same, yet, they are so different from each other, especially from a point of view of building a safety culture. In this article, we will look at the key differences between the two, and which of the two helps in building a safety culture.
The upside-down pyramid representing the hierarchy of controls is the basic starting point for hazard assessment and control at your workplace.
As the figure clearly illustrates, elimination or removal of the hazard from your workplace is the first and the most effective, reliable, and sustainable step as per the upside-down pyramid.
Coincidentally, ‘elimination’ and ‘prevention’ go hand-in-glove. When you eliminate or remove a hazard, you prevent it from causing any future damage at your workplace.
On the other hand, protecting your workers by providing them with personal protective equipment (PPE) is the last and the least effective, reliable, and sustainable step as per the pyramid step in the hierarchy of controls. That clearly says it all as far as what you need to do as an organization to have the most effective, reliable, and sustainable safety program.
Due diligence is the minimum you can do, which is reasonable to protect your workers’ health and safety. However, is ‘reasonable’ enough to help you build a safety culture? The answer is no.
It’s crucial for you to note that prevention works at a level well beyond what is reasonable in the given circumstances.
Thus, ‘prevention’ is about helping build a safety culture, whereas due diligence is focused more on ‘protection’.
If you are an organization aspiring to be safety leaders of tomorrow, then you need to start thinking more along the lines of ‘prevention’ rather than going in for the minimum ‘protection’.
This is the most effective, reliable, and sustainable way for you to start building your safety culture. Most organizations perceive workplace safety as a regulatory requirement, which they need to comply with for the heck of it. Obviously, they are thinking more about the fines and repercussions of non-compliance.
This needs to change, especially if you want to build a sustainable safety culture. It is crucial for you to bring a culture shift from safety being perceived as ‘their responsibility’ to ‘our responsibility’. The senior management have to be the instigators of this change, which will need to flow top-down starting from commitment.
Before discussing the concept of prevention vs. protection for COR™, let’s quickly understand the basic features and requirements of COR™ in Ontario.
COR™ certification considers the following three major aspects pertaining to workplace safety:
COR™ looks at a working system and proof of documentation on the activities that happen in an organization. COR™ certification is a process for measuring the consistency throughout the organization.
You need to start by looking at each element of the COR™ as setting up a process to capture and maintain that information. That’s where it becomes an integral part of your ‘business strategy’. Thus, you cannot just perceive COR™ as just another ‘business tactic’. Key to COR™ accreditation success lies in an organization’s ability to demonstrate the consistent application of its OHS program throughout the organization.
All this clearly directs us towards the all-important concept of sustainable workplace safety culture. Now, let us discuss what’s more effective and helpful for achieving COR™ in Ontario. The answer clearly lies in the upside-down pyramid representing the hierarchy of controls as mentioned earlier in this article.
Mario Tata, President, Basekamp and a COR™ certified company says that COR™ is all about developing and managing a health and safety management system (HSMS) that will help you in building a strong sustainable safety culture within your organization. Prevention helps you largely in building a safety culture whereas due diligence stops with reasonable, which is not good enough for COR™. Safety culture forces you to strive for continuous improvement, which is again a major requirement for COR™. 4S is proud to partner with Basekamp in helping them achieve and maintain COR™ certification.
Top construction industry buyers are increasingly preferring COR™ certified companies for projects. This is largely because they are more confident about the abilities of a COR™ certified company to execute projects safely, effectively, and systematically.
Prevention of hazards will help you work towards building a safety culture in the long term whereas protection restricts you to just doing things that are reasonable.
This clearly proves that prevention always trumps protection. As a company pursuing COR™, prevention is the best way forward for your organization.
4S is proud to partner with Basekamp, Steelcore, and Mopal in helping them achieve and maintain COR™ certification.
