Posted By Raymond Rapp
SoS

Apart from coming at it from a holistic perspective I am not too sure you want to go there. Attendance and ill health have never been good bedfellows and in my experience some operational managers will use h&s as a tool to improve attendance, which is not what it is necessarily designed for.

Ray

Posted By David Bannister
Good H&S makes work a good place to be (or at least better than with bad H&S).
Less noise, less smell, less dust and dirt, less worry about getting bitten by the machine.
Identification and removal of stressors.

However all this is peripheral to preventing ill health and stopping people being hurt by work.

Posted By Brando
The Reversal Theory web site above comes up as "domain name for sale".

Brando

Posted By Chris Packham
Attendance is one thing. Productive attendance is something quite different.

One of my concerns is that within occupational health far too much attention is paid to absence management, i.e. lack of "attendance".

My analogy for this is that absence is when your car has finally broken down in the fast lane of the M25. However, if your car is still running, but only on three out of four cylinders, it is equivalent of being "present at work" - but how quickly would you wish to get it into the workshop so that it is again 100%?

Questions to ask: "How many of our workers are only operating at part effectiveness due to health condition? What is this costing the organisation?"

Say you have four workers only operating at 75% (three out of four cylinders!). In order to obtain the same output as four healthy workers you will need to employ a fifth! What sort of business practice is that?

Let's pay more attention to what I call the "working wounded" - it makes sense if you explain it properly to management.

Chris

Posted By water67.
Hi. my organisation has "rebranded" us from H&S to health safety and wellbeing officers.

We are thus involved in areas such as healthy working lives initiative that looks at how we improve health - thus attendance, at least in theory. Thus look at the persons whole life style. Smoking cessation, healthy diet, exercise, alcohol consumption, We have developed and run a number of roadshows, information leaflets, negotiated time off for staff to attend smoking cessation classes, bring in nurse specialist for basic health checks and advice etc. etc. Also stress, the current "big one" in absence has been addressed via audits, direct and indirect action etc. we tend to use the HSE stuff or a modified version of this. There are lots of things you can bring into your presentation

hope this helps.

Posted By water67.
Kieran, your observations re humour brought to memory my time, when I was a young man 9more than a while ago), I spent in a LA housing office. The director and old and wise fox. insisted that at least 2 times a day we would stop for 5 mins and recount funny stories or jokes. If my memory serves me well it was generally a happy office and absence didn't seem to be a problem. Within my current organisation at an other location we have a relatively large open plan office: to smile is frowned upon and any time i visit it seems to be a very oppressive atmosphere filled with unhappy staff. No surprise that staff turn over is high as is absence. Got to say sometimes on here we could do with a little humour. Was gonna tell a joke but probably upset the moderators!!!

Thus I feel your point is well taken

Posted By Merv Newman
Two or three threads seem to be getting into this one : presence, humour, recognition/reward. Since it's Friday and I'm not cooking tonight I'll have a go at all three. And it's going to more or less "stream-of-consciousness" so bear with me.

Presence or "return to work" policies. I'm all for 'em so long as it is for the good of the injured or ill person during a period of recuperation.
I believe that it is generally received medical wisdom that one recovers more rapidly both mentally and physically if one can maintain or recover ones normal "social" life as soon as possible.
Your "social" life is comprised partly of the company of your family and friends outside of work and partly of the company of your friends and colleagues at work.

Encourage injured/recovering employees to return to work by all means. (and no, by "all" I do not mean whips and thumbscrews) but ensure that they CAN recover their normal work related social contacts. Don't stick 'em in a room away from their normal work area. They should be able to meet and chat with their friends with meals , coffee breaks, (we no longer say "tea breaks" Why not ?) starting and leaving times as normal as possible.

And give them something valuable, interesting and worthwhile to do. Making photocopies of the safety manual is neither valuable, interesting or worthwhile.

The best example I can give concerned a tattooed, shaven headed bruiser who broke his thumb (in the foundry employees used hammers to break the sprue or flash off castings. Hand injuries were more or less expected. Were) They plugged an extra terminal in the foreman's (why do I miss type that as foeman's ?) office, showed him how to use PowerPoint and asked him to design a training programme on "hand awareness" He did brilliantly.

Supervisors should be asked to think about possibilities of such "light duties" well in advance so as to be in a position to propose something "off-the-cuff" to the injured person.

And remember that the person is recovering. Capable of only 70% this week but maybe 80% next week and 100% the following week. It is not a permanent condition. The employee is progressing towards their regaining their normal fitness.

Pause

Back from watching the Friday edition of "Great British Men" Fish and chips for us tonight, with mushy peas.

Back to the plot.

Humour. 100% abso-etc-lutely essential in any social interaction. At work, at home, in the Sunday afternoon ruck (pouring rain, freezing cold, mud up to your ears) - do it with a laugh, a smile, a joke. It makes you want to do it, go there again. Stoned faced presentations, legal/statistical safety trainings ? Either you get their backs up or they turn off. Do it with a smile, build in a laugh or two and you've got 'em.

Recognition/reward. As it happens, I've just come back from a sales meeting with a client. The national training manager and a site training manager who had put in a BBS programme without using a consultant, "read a few books", and she was asking why it wasn't working.

First question to her : "in the work area you come across two employees. One is 100% correct on safety, one is only 80% (no gloves, for example) Who do you spend more of your valuable management time with ?"

Distillation of her reply "The one who is not 100% I point out the error, get them to admit it and agree to do better in the future"

So the good guy merits a "good morning", the bad guy merits 5 minutes of your time.

The bad guy has won, the good guy gets nothing.

Wrong.

MY approach is the other way round. First off, and you know it as well as I, talking to the bad guy about the value of protecting their precious digits and "getting" their agreement and commitment is a total waste of time. Turn your back and what do they do ? Whatever they want.

I prefer to spend a few "social" moments with the good guys. "did you see the match ?, where are you going for your holidays ?", "like the gloves" whatever.

The bad guy gets a polite "good morning", an ungloved hand raised in the air, and a raised eyebrow.

Pause for mushy peas etc. (that's me, tonight, not you on the shop floor)

I know that doesn't work with everyone but then nor does any other method. Eventually, with a decent BBS programme you get group dynamics working and the group, and the bad guys, know that they will not reach their targets and rewards until the bad guys get good.

You don't have to say a word. Except for the polite "good morning"

Trust me. I'm a consultant.

Enough. Gardener's world is on now.

have a nice weekend.

Merv