Rules and procedures form a major part of the safety system. As there is always a presumption in a HSE Management System that the rules and procedures will be followed, rule-breaking and other violations account for a major threat to HSE management.
Safety Violations are any intended deviations from the rules, regulations, procedures, and guidelines drawn up for the safe or efficient operation and maintenance of plant or equipment in the workplace. These rule- breaking could be unexpected, unintentional or sometimes purposeful.
There is always evidence that violations occur frequently both at work and in general life. Simple Car driving shows a variety of such violations e.g., Drink and driving, speeding, jumping traffic lights. Failure to follow public notices such as 'No Smoking', 'Do not park the vehicles”, clearly shows that violations are so commonplace for many of us.
It is also evident that a high level of routine violations either partially or wholly in the workplace such as human errors and removing guards on machinery could also result in many accidents and injuries. Recent disasters have called attention on the degree to which violations can become the normal way of working, eg. Improper work practices and lack of supervision. This information suggests that human errors underlie 70-90% of accidents and injuries and violations are an important contributor to industry's risks and industry’s overall performance.
The first step in bringing down the probability for industrial violations is to gain a better understanding of the reasons or motives which lie behind certain violations. To achieve this, it’s essential to classify the violations and then it will be clear to deal with them more effectively.
Violations can be classified as unintentional violations, routine violations, situational violations, exceptional violations and optimizing violations.
Unintentional violations occur when employees do not know or understand the rules and procedures or incorrectly understood what they are supposed to follow.
Such violations can be prevented and reduced by increasing awareness and enhanced training.
Routine Violations result from spontaneous and sometimes unconscious behaviour. They are routine actions (strong, but wrong, habitual actions) accepted by the particular workforce and are often tolerated by the organization and/or governing authority. Employees generally consider routine violations as low-risk to themselves and the task and allow the situation to persist attributed by inadequate training and supervision.
Routine violations can be minimized by:
- assessing the risks and reducing risk-taking behaviour;
- improving the probability of detection;
- taking account for the work systems to reduce the number of
- unnecessary rules
Situational violations occur when circumstances in the workplace (such as work pressure and chasing deadlines, unavailability of proper equipment or extreme weather conditions) persuade employees to violate certain rules and contribute to breaking of rules in situational violations.
Situational violations can often be overcome by:
- improved and upgraded job design;
- enhanced hazard reporting systems;
- better working conditions;
- more appropriate supervision.
Exceptional Violations occur in very unusual circumstances (e.g., emergencies, equipment failure). They can be the result of a conscious decision to violate or a prompt reaction to the situation.
These violations are mostly associated with high risk, often because the consequences of the action are not clearly understood or because the violation is known to be critical but seem inescapable.
Exceptional violations shall be addressed with typical solutions that include:
- Increasing training on unusual circumstances and situations
- Minimizing pressure on individuals to react quickly and provide support so they can cope with such situations.
- Making sure the 'defences' are in place to prevent such violations resulting in accidents
Optimizing violations
A final class of violations is created by a motive to optimize and improve a work situation. These violations occur when there’s a need for excitement in jobs that are considered repetitive, unchallenging or boring and when having a desire to dig into the boundaries of a system that are thought to be too restrictive.
Optimizing violations can be minimized through a process of job redesigning and modifications and an examination of rules which are considered restrictive.
Hazard awareness and risk perception: Approach to reducing violations
The assessment of hazard awareness and risk perception is therefore predominant to understand the reasons behind some rule violations. The choice of committing a violation is often derived from a conscious decision which balances the perceived risks against the perceived benefits.
Thus, while assessing the training needs associated with reducing safety violations it is important to attain some understanding of:
- the degree to which the workers understand the hazards;
- the risk they will experience if they choose to deviate from the rules;
- the benefits (both to themselves and their organization) which they perceive and obtain from breaking the rules. The benefits may be either short term or long term. They may be personal benefits (eg. ego needs, financial benefits, tangible needs and behaviour in order to fit in with a group/ having compliance with group norms) as well as benefits for the company (eg. more production, faster repairs).
It is important to measure changes in attitudes and behaviours and identify unsafe behaviours through behaviour-based safety programs and develop safe behaviours which in turn improves the risk perception in the workforce.
Individual and organizational approaches to reduce violations
There are two main approaches to reduce violations: the individual and organizational approaches.
1. Individual approaches are focused more on the individual or individuals that violate rules and generally include behavioural-based safety programs. The individual approach is to influence the individuals and train them to reduce violations. This approach includes
- conducting walk rounds, observing behaviours and
- give immediate and limitless feedback to the workforce when unwanted behaviours are observed.
2. Organizational approaches are focused more on circumstances/ situations and organizational factors that can contribute to or reduce the occurrence of violations. By removing external triggers and enhancing the organizational and technical factors the number of violations can be reduced. The organizational approach includes:
o Monitoring the use of existing rules
o Evaluating the rules for their effectiveness
o Enforcing the use of good rules
o Executing rules and dealing with exceptions
o Redesigning or discarding ineffective rules
o Defining the rules for new processes or existing process
o Developing appropriate rules
o Testing and approving rules and store in management information
o Communicating and training in the usage of rules and adaptation
No comments:
Post a Comment