Posted By Merv Newman Interesting link about accidents to HSE employees. http://www.timesonline.c...ws/uk/article1361616.ece Includes the quote “It would be unreasonable to expect that an organisation that employs more than 3,500 people would suffer no injuries,” Now they tell us. Merv

Posted By Pugwash Now let's not blame the HSE for this. Yes, it it is a classic. It is a classic case of journalist being told to produce 500 words on anything to fill up space in the paper and so creating a story out of nothing. The easiest approach is of course to take the FOI route. (A bit of web work would have taken him to the minutes of the HSE Board meetings where the info is available for all to see.) Then confront the HSE with the figures and try to get them to say something which will look rather silly if quoted out of context. Finally, to make the word count up to 500, take a story from this weeks papers and change the facts to suit the story and the point you want to make. (Lets imply that a first aid trainer in the private sector is in fact an HSE inspector.) Hey presto, 500 words which actually say nothing but which reinforce the prejudices of those who have them already. Is it not any wonder that journalists are one of the most despised professions (down there with lawyers, politicians and estate agents). End of rant. Have a nice weekend.

Posted By Peter MacDonald I may be fishing for a response....

Posted By Merv Newman As Pete says, it's not a target it's a religion. Some companies have very strong long lasting cultures of H&S excellence. And it does work. Employees are thanked and rewarded for reporting incidents or safer ways of working. They are thanked and rewarded for working safely. In my career I had four employers. First a medical production/research laboratory. Safety was never mentioned. Next was a waterworks; Safety never happened. Third was a paper mill. The safety officer was never seen. Then I moved to a rubber and plastics plant and eventually became H&S manager for about 6 years. During those years we (250 employees) had no injury that a plaster wouldn't cope with. Then I became H&S manager of a greenfield engineering plant. 500 new employees. During the 10 years I was there we had one Lost Time Injury and three without lost time. We did average 20 to 25 "first aid" injuries each year, but we paid a lot of attention to eliminating them. Never quite succeeded but we were getting there. So yeah, "All injuries are preventable" Merv

Posted By Robert K Lewis The zero accident target ranks alongside the zero carbon buildings and zero waste sites as the utopian statements of all times. We all seem to forget that when we set targets they must, in order to be a useful management tool, be achievable, timed and resourced. they manage only really to be specific and measurable but that is all, in my view. Yes we can work with an attitude that we should be able to achieve these expectations, using it to guide our decision making process. But that does not make such statements targets. As an auditor I often ask organisations how they will achieve these statements and find that they simply cannot demonstrate how such things are to be met. Hence an easy shot for any half decent auditor. Bob

Posted By Robert K Lewis Merv I did not say Lost time accidents - the phrase means ALL accidnets not just those needing reports to gov. bodies etc. However I take your point we can have the expectation but the fact is that we no that an absolute statement of Zero is not achievable - Fuzzy logic admirably demonstrates the problem of claiming such an achievment as a possibility. I was attempting a nuanced approach. The HSE figures are however one which should concern us - they will however claim good reporting systems!!! Bob

Posted By Mathew Wright I suppose it depends what you define as an accident. If you are talking about lost-time injuries, then yes I agree these are preventable. If you are talking about all injuries - paper cuts, bruises, scratches......etc, then that's different. I can't imagine that any organisation with a reasonable number of people has had zero accidents. They may have had zero (or very few) reported accidents but that doesn't mean they didn't happen. Is Fred, who works in accounts, really going to report his paper cut if it will ruin the accident stats - I don't think so. Surely it is all about risk; we can minimise the level of risk but we can not eliminate it - therefore injuries will happen.

Posted By Chris Packham If you consider damage to health as a form of accident, then it is unrealistic to propose that all accidents can be prevented. Interindividual variability is an established fact, particularly where skin exposure is concerned. There are even people who develop an allergic reaction from contact between water and the skin! Given such interindividual variability we cannot exclude that someone, somewhere, will react to a substance in contact with their skin that does not affect anyone else in that workplace. It is all about balancing benefit and risk. For example, studies show that about one person in one million will develop a true allergy to lanolin. For the rest of the population this is one of the best emollients there is. Are we to deny them the benefits from it, just to avoid that one problem person? Consider also that we have many new chemicals appearing on the market. Whilst tests may suggest no hazard, the long term hazard cannot be detected by short term tests. So what happens in a few years time when that "safe" chemical starts to cause health problems? Falling off ladders is relatively easy to prevent compared with exposure to chemicals! Chris

Posted By Raymond Rapp There was me thinking that the concept of Zero Tolerance only applied to unsafe acts - not accidents per se. Ray

Posted By ddraigice It seems the journo's are even lower than we thought. It seems they've mixed up minor accidents in HSE and compared them with serious injuries of industry. It has been suggested that they may have done this on purpose but I dont believe it. Surely they are just stupid. http://www.hse.gov.uk/press/record/var120207.htm

Posted By Robert K Lewis Merv Like some of the people on this forum I too know that Zero accidents can be a strong expectation to drive forward an organisation's culture but I find that many claiming zero figures have actually defined the term "accident" so as to exclude those irritating reports that damage the zero result. I have absolutely no problem with a statement such as "Zero Lost Time Accidents" as this actually qualifies what is being measured. I still hold however that the term "target" cannot be used. The use and misuse of figures to mean whatever we wish is highlighted by the journalists successful use of the available figures to make his point. For a period of time organisations can expect to achieve a zero lost time figure but this does not mean that they are at zero. If we extend the time window then the figures can start to include those historic accidents and make an organisation seem far different to its current position. Fuzzy logic, as I am prone to remind people, states that every event occurs to some degree at every occasion. My wife parking in a car park with 10 empty spaces will park in all of them to a degree, 90% in one, 3% in another, 7% in a third and 0% in the remainder, she therefore occupies all 10 to a degree. Before you all shout rubbish it is the same logic that calculates and predicts camera shake, thus enabling modern cameras to produce sharp images at all times. Thus every action is both safe and unsafe to varying degrees - it is some random event that moves it one way or the other to determine any injury outcome. After all we can often perform dangerous acts without injury as witnessed by the operative successfully standing with one foot on the stepladder and one on the handrails. The lack of a fall merely confirms to him it is a safe method. Back to the HSE however after that digression. Their claim for high reporting does not necessarily hold water without evidence to back it up. It is in fact almost impossible to prove or disprove it as a statement. Thus it is a meaningless claim. Clearly HSE offices have a propensity to produce many injuries of varying severity and do they have an action plan to reduce the figures? Bob