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• Blurring Work Safety: A blessing or a curse? Thoughts on the blurring in NZ
  John Wren
  Published on: 1 April 2003

• Published on: 1 April 2003

  Blurring Work Safety: A blessing or a curse? Thoughts on the blurring in NZ

  • John Wren, Senior Analyst

  Dear Editor

  Gordon Smith’s editorial is timely, blurring of the boundaries between work place safety and the home is a reality in New Zealand.[1] A good example of this blurring can be found in a story titled “Mill shows it's safer than houses” in today’s edition of the New Zealand Herald :htt...

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  Dear Editor

  Gordon Smith’s editorial is timely, blurring of the boundaries between work place safety and the home is a reality in New Zealand.[1] A good example of this blurring can be found in a story titled “Mill shows it's safer than houses” in today’s edition of the New Zealand Herald :http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3301352&thesection=news&thesubsection=general

  As a person who has extensive knowledge and work experience in both community based injury prevention programmes and work place health and safety the blurring of the boundary is a fascinating development. In general, I welcome the blurring as providing an opportunity for improving the health and safety of all. However, I also have some questions about the development, which are outlined below.

  In New Zealand, there is an increasing trend for larger companies to engage in off-the-job injury prevention. At the same time, there is a growing number of community organisations, led by a coordinator, who facilitate injury prevention activities in their local community.

  In both cases, a wide range of activities at various levels of intervention - from educating the individual to advocating for change in public policy - is being undertaken to promote injury prevention in various settings, including the home, at work and at play.

  However, there is little communication between community groups and occupational health and safety (oh&s) practitioners about what each is doing. This is unfortunate because resources for injury prevention are scarce. By working more collaboratively, better use would be made of available resources.

  I also believe that workplace and community injury prevention practitioners are united by a common goal to reduce injuries. Only their differing training and areas of expertise divide them.

  For example, Safekids is funded to focus on child safety, which limits its ability to assist with programmes aimed at adults. This is unfortunate, because it may result in 'tunnel vision' or 'patch protection’; meaning common areas of interest are overlooked.

  Falls, for example, are a significant injury issue for everyone: children, adults and employees. The causes of falls for each group may be different but the solutions are similar, orientated towards engineering/environmental modification or behavioural change to reduce risk. Both types of intervention are appropriate irrespective of fall situation or age group, hence room for collaboration and shared solutions exists.

  For this to occur, practitioners must have the knowledge and ability to see and understand the connections that exist across a range of injury prevention activities, which leads to another observation: the two types of practitioners tend to have different skill sets and training, which can be a barrier to communication.

  Occupational health and safety practitioners generally have engineering, nursing or occupational health backgrounds and have knowledge of oh&s management systems. In contrast, community practitioners tend to have backgrounds in health promotion, education or road safety and have knowledge of models of community development. Both groups bring a unique perspective and knowledge to the injury prevention puzzle; we should learn from each other.

  How will this cooperation happen? If a company wanted to promote driver safety to its employees, instead of developing an in-house programme, it may be more cost effective for the company to use community injury prevention practitioners to deliver an agreed programme as part of a wider community initiative.

  In a similar way, if a community practitioner wanted to undertake a safe lifting programme, by cooperating with their oh&s colleagues, it may be that a targeted initiative could be delivered that would be more effective than a more generic approach, because it could be supported and followed up by companies participating in the initiative.

  In both cases, a synergy could be achieved for preventing injuries, and each could learn from the other through the exchange of skills, knowledge and abilities. Potentially, good evaluations using controlled environments could also be undertaken to assess the efficacy of an intervention.

  However, I have some questions about the transferring of workplace injury prevention into the non-work environment. The first concern has to do with privacy.

  The transferring of company attention of worker health and safety into the home environment can be seen as invasion of the employee’s privacy. What right does a company have to interfere in what a person does off the job? This sort of argument is commonly heard from opponents to compulsory workplace drug testing. The counter argument from companies is that injuries off the job are causing them significant money in terms of lost-time. Lost time in terms of poor performance at work because of a back injury suffered playing rugby on the weekend, or workers taking extra sick leave because the worker has to be at home to assist an injured family member.

  A more important concern I have is whether corporate philosophies and timeframes are actually compatible with community modes of operation. Two examples:
  1) I question whether many companies are comfortable with the long timeframes, typically two to three years, and the process of consultation often required to effectively work with communities.
  2) A sceptical person may also question the motive behind a company’s proposed involvement with the community: is the company genuinely interested in improving the health and safety of its workers and families?
  Or is it a marketing ploy to help improve its image in the community while new and potentially harmful production facilities are introduced into the community and community support is required in order to smooth its introduction?

  Another issue concerns whether a company might be increasing its exposure to legal liability by undertaking injury prevention initiatives outside of its field of expertise. This may occur as the result of the the OHS manager undertaking the delivery of an injury prevention programme aimed at the home or sport environment that is inappropriate in content and delivery for such settings. In the NZ legal environment, such a concern is not a significant issue because of our accident compensation system, however I suggest that it could be a real issue in a different legal environment such as the United States of America.

  My final concern has to do with the traditional dominance of the psychological model of injury causation in workplace safety, which “blames the victim” and leads to the propagation of Behaviour Based Systems as the preferred method of injury prevention. Such an approach, I would argue, is incompatible with most public health models of health promotion and injury prevention, such as the Spectrum of Injury Prevention model, which informs the work of Safekids NZ. This is not to deny that there aren’t good workplace models of injury prevention, in particular those informed by ‘systems models’, which are compatible with similar models in public health.

  In summary, the blurring of the workplace safety activity boundary is a fact of life in New Zealand. It is a development that I believe that has potential to improve the health and safety of many New Zealanders, and to advance the knowledge base of all those involved in injury prevention. However I also have some questions about the blurring taking place. For example, company involvement promoting non-work related safety could be seen as unwarranted interference in the private lives of people. Injury prevention practitioners situated in businesses and in communities typically have different disciplinary backgrounds, which may hinder communications. And, business motives and methods of operation aren’t necessarily compatible with community processes and public health models of injury prevention.

  Reference

  (1) GS Smith. Injury prevention: blurring the distinctions between home and work. Inj Prev 2003; 9: 3-5

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  Conflict of Interest:
  None declared.

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