The Curse of Dataism Beard writes: ‘The scions of Silicon Valley have introduced our world to a new religion of ‘Dataism’. In its extreme form proponents of the Dataist worldview perceive the entire universe as a flow of data, see organisms as little more than biochemical algorithms, and believe that humanities cosmic vocation is to […]
Safety Statistics
It’s alright ma I’m only bleeding
It’s alright ma I’m only bleeding A healthy loyalty is not passive and complacent but active and critical Harold Laski 1 The 21st October 2016 commemorated half a century since the Aberfan disaster in South Wales, United Kingdom which resulted in the deaths of 116 school children and 28 adults and wiped out a generation. […]
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Safety in Numbers
Safety in Numbers With all the talk about safety and zero we would have to wonder how ZERO will ever be achieved. Recently there was a job that had about 30 first aid cases. (These ranged from a minor scratch to a sprained wrist.) What the company decided was that there had not been enough […]
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Target Trade-Offs and Numeric Goals
Target Trade-Offs and Numeric Goals We learn recently that Victorian Police – a supposed institution of trust, has fabricated numbers over the past 5 years in order to meet targets. It is reported today that Victoria Police have fabricated 258,000 breath tests in order to meet targets. How is this relevant for safety? I hear […]
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The Tyranny of Metrics
The Tyranny of Metrics This is the title of a very easy to read book on the obsession of metrics by Jerry Z. Muller. It should be mandatory reading for anyone in the safety industry. ‘The challenges of ‘tick and flick’ in the culture of safety is endemic. We know from the research by Herbert […]
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By What Method?
By What Method? One of the strange beliefs of Safety is that the publication of injury statistics invokes change? Ah, how does it do that? Since when did information become motivation? When one looks at the many promises made in the safety industry and all the propaganda about zero, injury reduction etc. there are three […]
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I am a Spreadsheet King
I am a Spreadsheet King I have had numerous conversations with safety people this week who lament the amount of time they have to spend doing spreadsheets reporting on everything from injury rates, TRIFR, near miss etc. One a GM of a tier 1 organisation tells me he hasn’t had time to walk the floor […]
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The Safety Data Delusion
The Safety Data Delusion I read with amusement the Safety Institute of Australia (SIA) piece on 20 February that endorses the nonsense of safety metrics. Framed as ‘news’, this non-news is anti-safety and anti-cultural intelligence. There is no data that can measure safety just as there is no data that can measure culture. The […]
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WHS Reporting and Due Diligence: Some practical thoughts
By Greg Smith, WHS Lawyer. First published here Quote from the article: If two people die in an electrical incident at your workplace, nobody cares what your last safety culture survey reveals. You need to demonstrate how the risk of electrocution was managed in your organisation, and whether it was managed effectively. No one cares […]
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Measuring and Reporting on Work Health & Safety
Greg, the author of this article (first published here), certainly does upset some safety people on Linkedin! He makes an excellent point here – you may get 97%, a big tick or a star for having a plethora of JHAs (or SWMS, JSAs, SOPs etc), another for them being extremely comprehensive and a few more […]
