In a follow on to vincehowards post on "Waiver from Liability", I ask the question; why do so many senior leadership teams employ competent advisors and then either reject or actively argue with the advice they have paid for?

Why bother?

I'm sure there is not a safety professional on these forums that have not experienced this at some time or perhaps all of the time.

Good afternoon Holliday

I think that in a well run organisation it is entirely appropriate for managers (both senior and lower down) to choose not to accept all the advice they get from their OSH  professional(s).

Suppose you have a factory setting (though you can imagine any setting as being a sort of factory, where work is about converting inputs into outputs preferably in a fashion that is both efficient and effective).

The Works Manager or someone with a similar title has lots of competing priorities, but the OSH professional tends to focus on just one of those priorities and may not be seeing the broader picture. 

If the organisation is run as generally advised then that Works Manager should apply an integrated approach where they own H&S just as they own output, quality and many other priorities.

That person has to work out how the advice from their OSH professional fits in (or not, or only in part) with all the other things they are responsible for.

Suppose you as the OSH professional identify some substandard machinery guarding issues and suggest that the company spends £10,000 on improvements.

However, what the OSH professional may not see is that there is a plan brewing to spend £50,000 on chaging the way things are done, possibly completely doing away with the process that involves the machinery with substandard guarding. It might not be sound business to spend £10,000 on new guards for machinery that is going to be decomissioned in the next year or so. Conversely the risk might be so great that such expendurite is needed even though it is a short term investment.

Of course, the more the OSH professional is a trusted adviser the more likely it is that they become embedded into a decision making process that DOES look at the big picture. At this point they may be less inclined to press for that £10k short term investment in machinery guarding as they can better see how the same money would add more value as part of a broader investment.

Not always the story. Managers sometimes give their OSH professionals insufficient hearing!! - quite often as they don't really own H&S as an integral part of their role - easy to try and offload the H&S to the Safety Bod.

Originally Posted by: Holliday42333

 I ask the question; why do so many senior leadership teams employ competent advisors and then either reject or actively argue with the advice they have paid for?

Why bother?

Yes we have all had our comments argued with, but there is nothing wrong with ideas or opinions being challenged. Sound reasoning and an ability to influence others is an important toolkit in the H&S practitioners arsenal. 

By the same token I have also witnessed productivity stifled by overzealous H&S bods. On a site a few years back all of the contractors were told to revise their RAMS to include the provision that every time a power tool was not in use the battery was removed, even when placed down for a few minutes. The reason being as there had been an incident on another site(!) that someone had picked up a tool accidently squeezing the trigger in the process and injured themselves. Now given the amount of times trdades pick up and put doen thieir drills, etc throughout a working day and how many times an injury occured, is this reasonably practicable? 

Now I'm not saying your advice is this flawed, but if your arguement cannot stand up to scrutiny than you need to rethink, or keep documented records of your advice given and move on.

Originally Posted by: Holliday42333

In a follow on to vincehowards post on "Waiver from Liability", I ask the question; why do so many senior leadership teams employ competent advisors and then either reject or actively argue with the advice they have paid for?

Why bother?

I'm sure there is not a safety professional on these forums that have not experienced this at some time or perhaps all of the time.

That's a great question—and a common frustration. Often, it's not about the competence of the advisor but about ego, organizational culture, or fear of change. Some leaders view safety advice as a challenge to authority rather than a support to decision-making. Until safety is seen as a core value, not a compliance checkbox, this resistance may continue.

There is quite a lot of research into the 'Why bother question'...there are a number of behavioural factors in both roles the person delivering and the person (decision maker) receiving...but at the end of the day sometimes it just comes down to how it is delivered...the 'percpetion' of elf' and safety is to prevent work...when the message should be to keep work going safely and efficiently without loss to people plant procees or the environment....there is a rise of, dare I say it 'Trupmesq' type leaders/ middle, leaders as that behaviour is seen as acceptable for the 'go getter' nowadays...saying that not all of these actions can be wrong...my point here is there is a mixture of culture(peoples backgrounds) culture from the organisation and business drivers makes us all a bit scared at times so sometimes (yes at all levels) or at the very least fearful...put yourself in the shoes of the IOM on the Claymore rig when he was told PipeAlpha was on fire...

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/391983792_The_Social_Psychology_of_Safety_Leadership_Compliance_and_Behavior_in_High_Risk_Workplaces