Pay attention to safety and health, companies warned

SOUTH Africa should pay more attention to safety and health precautions in various industries, Segran Reddy, operations manager at SRA, the safety, health and environmental management company, said on Tuesday.

Speaking at the Occupational Safety and Health Expo in Johannesburg, Mr Reddy said 98% of industrial incidents worldwide — up from 88% in the 1970s — occurred because of a lack of compliance with health and safety policies.

"Risk management should be a fact-finding exercise and not a fault-finding exercise," Mr Reddy said. "The minute that management looks for someone to blame, the root to real operational problems will become harder to find."

Nick Higginson, MD of UK-based Phoenix Health & Safety Consultants, said risk management standards had improved generally over the years but the biggest challenge was compliance.

"In the UK, lots of regulations and precautions, since the legislation of the Health and Safety at Work Act, have been put in place for industries," he said. "However, most accidents are caused by people not following the guidelines put there to ensure their safety."

Mr Higginson noted a difference in levels of compliance between major companies and small businesses. While large corporations were prepared to improve safety standards, "it’s the smaller corporations and businesses that we have a harder time convincing and engaging, given the concern for costs".

Mr Reddy said while risks in many industries were always present, it was important to reduce the severity of those risks, and it was important to investigate safety systems when analysing evidence after an accident.

"If evidence is not captured soon enough, that evidence begins to dissolve. For a number of occupations, pre-employment analysis is needed — for example, in mechanics.

"I also believe industrial psychologists are needed to examine employees’ academic, physical and emotional competency," he said.

Source : BusinessDay