UNIT DI1: KNOW - WORKPLACE HEALTH AND SAFETY PRINCIPLES (INTERNATIONAL) 

SCENARIO
You are a newly appointed health and safety advisor for an organisation called ‘PrintUp’. PrintUp has been in operation since 1995 and has excelled in providing a high-quality printing service for organisations. PrintUp produces a wide range of products including advertising posters, leaflets, newsletters, food packaging, and books.

PrintUp operate in a two-storey building. The printing department is where most of the printing, cutting, binding, and packaging takes place. This is also known as the ‘shopfloor’.
There are 120 workers at PrintUp, with 52 of them working on the shopfloor in different shift patterns.
On joining PrintUp in 2016, the chief executive officer (CEO) recruited a new senior management team (SMT) comprising a senior accounting manager, a senior engineering manager and a senior marketing manager.

PrintUp used to have an excellent safety record. More recently, they have seen an increase in incidents, and in the last two years, two workers have suffered serious injuries. In addition to this, over the last 12 months, there has been a 10% increase in reportable injuries and a 25% increase in lost working days. However, near miss reports have decreased from fifteen to five reported incidents.

The CEO is concerned about how these recent accidents on the shopfloor will be viewed by potential and existing customers. You are also concerned by these trends, and you decide to investigate. You start by comparing PrintUp’s accident rates with those at similar types of organisations. Your analysis shows that they are similar. However, PrintUp’s statistics still concern you, so you decide to investigate further.

First, you look at the findings of the internal accident investigations of the two accidents that resulted in serious injuries. Both accidents happened on the shopfloor, although they were unrelated events. The brief investigations concluded that there was a ‘lack of care’ by the workers.
The first accident involved a forklift truck (FLT) carrying multiple large boxes. The driver failed to slow down even though there was a worker using the pedestrian crossing. As a result, the FLT collided with the worker, crushing their leg. The investigation concluded that the driver was at fault as they were driving too fast.

Meeting with the CEO
Concerned by your findings, you set up an urgent meeting with the CEO. The CEO listens to what you have to say, but they raise their voice when giving you an explanation. They tell you that their main goal is to invest any profit into increasing production efficiency and marketing. They also tell you that there have been fewer new contracts over the last seven years. Organisations are spending less money on printed advertising literature as they focus more on digital advertising. Food manufacturers have also cut back on packaging, due to global rising costs and environmental concerns. Consumers are just spending less money. 

The CEO wants PrintUp to investigate the use of ‘environmentally friendly’ alternatives, such as eco- friendly inks and recycled paper. They think that this will help their competitive edge, as many other printing organisations are slow to move in this direction to show commitment to environmental protection.

You tell the CEO that you want to see why accidents have increased. The CEO tells you that they have always believed that accidents cannot be avoided. You tell the CEO that applying a safety climate tool (SCT) will give a broad insight into PrintUp’s health and safety culture, and how workers feel about safety. Based on what you find with the SCT, you plan to pilot a behavioural change programme initiative. The CEO likes the idea of a behavioural change programme. They believe that it will be easy to see which workers are to blame for unsafe behaviours, then they can be disciplined. You try to explain that this is not the aim of the programme.

The CEO concludes the meeting and thinks that there is no need to waste time on an SCT or on a piloted behavioural change programme. They would like the behavioural change programme to start as soon as possible, as they believe it would improve the reputation of the organisation.

The behavioural change programme
For the first three weeks of the programme, you spend some time outlining its aims; this includes a series of presentations to all workers. The CEO, the senior accounting manager, and two of the supervisors are too busy to attend any of the presentations.

Following one of your presentations, two workers separately ask to speak to you in confidence. One worker tells you that they were seriously injured six months ago, because of a non-work-related accident, which means that they now need to use a wheelchair. They go on to say that they returned to full-time work two months ago without a phased return to work. Their supervisor refused to allow them to return to their usual job on the shopfloor, citing ‘safety concerns’. However, the worker was assessed as medically fit to return to their previous job, but some modifications would be needed. They tell you that they had been placed in the office and had been given administration tasks, with a promise that they could return to their normal role within a few months. This has not happened. They also find it difficult to open heavy doors around the site.

Steering Group Meetings
Six of the observers do not attend the first steering group meeting, including the supervisor. You learn that each observation is taking approximately 45 minutes to complete and is done during the observer’s morning shifts. Observers who attend say that lots of concerning behaviour has been identified. One example was where a group of workers were not using designated walkways. One of these workers narrowly avoided a collision with a moving FLT. Observers tell you that they tried to correct the behaviour, but one of the workers just said, “the supervisors do it, so why shouldn’t I?” Another observer said that they had seen a shopfloor worker being lifted by an FLT to reach some racking. They did not challenge this by giving observation feedback, as they thought that this issue was already being dealt with.

A month later, the second steering group meeting has better attendance. During this meeting you discuss a near miss that was observed. The observer saw an experienced worker attempting to identify and repair an intermittent fault with one of the printing presses. Their hand was almost trapped between the rollers of the printing press while trying to find the fault. The observer quickly pressed the emergency stop button and told the experienced worker that they should switch off the printing press and wait for maintenance to fix the fault. The observer then asked the worker to report the fault and log the near miss. The worker responded by saying “what’s the point? The forms take too long to fill in and nothing ever gets done anyway”. During the meeting, a disagreement then starts between the supervisor and another observer. The supervisor says that the experienced worker was right in trying to get the machine working again, rather than waiting for maintenance.