Byrne’s blog – Pals

I’m feeling very strange today. It’s the start of November and exactly one week ago that I handed in my notice. By the time you’re reading this it should be mid-January and I should have been doing my new job for about two weeks (I managed to negotiate my notice period). It’s funny because while I know the right thing for me and my career is to make the move I still feel like I’ve jilted a lover that I actually like!

One of the things I’m really going to miss about my old job is my team (and I’m not saying I won’t have an amazing team where I’m going, I just haven’t got there yet!)  You see my team achieved so much in the last three and half years and we wouldn’t have been able to do it if it wasn’t for the fact that we were more like a family than work colleagues.  It didn’t matter how hard the day was, how complex the problem, or how hard the performance target we helped each other through it because we each brought something completely unique to the party.

Whether it was the wickedest sense of humour I’ve ever come across, amazing attention to detail, people to vent to when you needed it, someone looking at a problem from a completely different angle, or people so motivated that they just never give up.  We achieved great things, without doubt, some of that was because of the qualities we each had, some down to the leadership (obviously ) but most of it was because the sum of the parts was greater than any individual.

All too often I hear safety professionals at the end of their tether because they don’t have support from their boss or colleagues.  Now I’m not sure if that makes me sad or annoyed if I’m honest. Of course I feel for them, we’ve all been there thinking we’re isolated and unappreciated but in this day and age there is no excuse for it.  I accept you might not have a team around you (many safety professionals are ‘stand alone’) or have an incredibly supportive boss (like I had), but with all the networking opportunities available you can, if nothing else, join a virtual team.

Without this wishing to sound like too much of a confession, I never used to rate the discussion forums on various safety bodies websites nor those on the Linkedin safety groups. But it’s only now that I understand some of their power. They create a sense of community and team spirit that, thankfully I’ve never needed to use, but leaving my second family behind I get it!

Some of you may have seen the film ‘Young Guns’ from the late 1980s that starred the Hollywood Brat Pack of the time: Emilio Estevez, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen et. al. It tells the story of how Billy the Kid meets his gang and their journey to avenge the murder of the cattleman who took them all in, educated them and prepared them for what life had in store. In one scene after the mother of all gun battles, Billy’s gang is in pieces and he turns to the remaining members and says: “ … if you can get yourself three or four good pals then you got yourself a tribe, there ain’t nothing stronger than that. We got to stick together fella’s”.

The films epilogue talks about what happens to Billy, he was apparently killed by Sheriff Pat Garret years later. But after he was buried someone got into the graveyard and chiselled an inscription on Billy’s tombstone it read only one word ‘Pals’.

I’m not saying I’ve taken having a great team for granted because getting a great team, taking time to find out what each person has to offer, what their drivers are and their strengthens and weaknesses takes time. I know I’ve been fortunate enough to have worked with great people (with two or three notable exceptions) in my career, but at this point in my life I’ve realised the importance of a strong support network in whatever form that takes.

Like Billy, I’ve written ‘Pals’ on my old team photo and to whoever gets my old job…look after my team.

EurOSHM Richard Byrne
BSc (Hons), CMIOSH, MIIRSM, AIMEA
rjbyrne@hotmail.co.uk

Richard Byrne has a first-class combined honours degree in ergonomics and health and safety management, along with 10 years’ broad health, safety and environmental experience. He is a chartered member of IOSH, a member of IIRSM and an associate member of IEMA, and also holds EurOSHM status.

Byrne’s blog – One of those days

One of those days

I should have known that despite my planning my evening was going to go wrong when a meeting with my boss, about how we were going to present something to one of our European Directors over ran by half an hour.  This meant my meeting with our bean counter (sorry, management accountant) was put back and so I was an hour late when I left to go to Burnley.

For those of you that don’t know the M6 northbound from Birmingham very well, there are two parts of it you don’t even entertain going on after 4 in the afternoon – the bit from Brum to Cannock and the stretch between Stoke and the M62.  I left at 4.20pm and had to go through both car parks.

While stuck on the bloody M6 I started to fantasise about what I might have for dinner and having gone though an imaginary menu in my head by the time I turn right at Preston I’ve settled on a big old mixed grill.

Eight o’clock I arrive at the hotel and, on the final approach to it, I got the feeling all of us get who travel with work get – is this place going to be a rat hole?  And you have to put your faith in the person who booked for you (thankfully my boss’ PA is a legend and didn’t disappoint this time, well it was clean, fairly modern with a big bed and pub near by and within budget!).

So having checked in, grabbed my laptop and internet dongle thingy I head for the bar, order my pint and mixed grill (steak cooked ‘medium’) and find a nice quiet corner to do some more lengthy emails that you can’t do very easily on the smartphone I have.

Boot the laptop up, wait 10 minutes for the thing to finish its start up scripts.  Put my mobile broadband dongle in and wait for it to get a signal then connect.  Half of my pint’s gone by now.

Just as I’m about to double click on my email icon, the signal drops and I have to reconnect. Eventually I open my email, well I say open it, I double click the icon to open it.  You see it’s an internet based email which means I end up waiting another 10 minutes for the blue bar in the bottom right hand corner of the page to fill the box telling me the page has fully downloaded.

When the bar is almost there, my mixed grill arrives I think my lucks in as the waitress asks ‘Is there anything I get you darling?’ Darling?  Barmaids use that word but waitresses?  Not in the restaurants I go to! Then I realise all the waiting staff talk like that, I make a mental note to mention to Sue (boss’ PA) that this place has gone from 4 to 3 out of 5 rating.  I order another pint.

Hoorary!  My inbox is at last displayed and whilst chasing my steak round the plate (for those of you that might in the future order a steak cooked to ‘medium’ in Burnley, their ‘medium’ is practically still alive, I’m talking blood dripping – I’d had enough of everything by then so didn’t complain).

I crack on and read the 12 emails people I have sent me from 4.20 to 5pm, I hit reply to the first and start my 8-minute wait for the page to load.  When the gammon, eggs and chips have gone I decide to cancel the electronic paint drying session and call the people in the morning and talk them through my thoughts on the stuff they’d sent me.

Then it struck me the digital revolution and paper free office, is great and all but people just don’t talk anymore. And us safety types are just as guilty. I admit sometimes it’s easier to send a ‘bad news email’ rather than calling the person to tell them but actually for me that’s the cowards way out.

I’ve always believed that safety is about engaging people – maybe even talking with emotion and passion about the topic too, that would be a novel experience for some of the people in our profession (yes I mean you with the clipboard and cagoule).  Where do you get that with an email?

OK you have to put some stuff in writing I get that, so I’m starting a petition to bring back the memo.  Anyone who wants to had their support please sign below!

EurOSHM Richard Byrne
BSc (Hons), CMIOSH, MIIRSM, AIMEA
rjbyrne@hotmail.co.uk

Richard Byrne is group head of health, safety and technical services at ATS Euromaster and has a first-class combined honours degree in ergonomics and health and safety management, along with 10 years’ broad health, safety and environmental experience. He is a chartered member of IOSH, a member of IIRSM and an associate member of IEMA, and also holds EurOSHM status.

Byrne’s blog – An appropriate use of Elf & Safety at Work

At last I have found an appropriate use for ‘Elf and Safety at Work’ and no this isn’t going to be another one of those annoyingly irritating stories about safety gone mad and some spokesman for the professional then explaining why safety is being used as a scapegoat for something, promise …

I was strolling round the village where Father Christmas and his elves live (well at least that’s what the sign said, I thought they lived in the North Pole not Telford?!) with my four year old and 18 month old girls and in one of the little model workshops there were two model elves working away making presents for Santa to deliver in a few weeks time. When I turned to leave I spotted on the door a sign that read: ‘The Elf Safety at Work Act applies in these premises’. 

Absolute genius I thought! 

At last an appropriate use of Elf and Safety!  Not only that but someone had the guts to say what they really mean, OK they may have been poking a bit of fun at safety but it got the message across – Elves are important too!!

I do wish more people would say what they really mean, life would be so much more simple. There was a story in my paper a few months ago about the boss of a New York PR firm who got really miffed about there never being any milk in the fridge when he came to have a coffee. According to the Times he wrote an email to all his people saying something like:

“The person that did this is either incredibly lazy, obnoxiously selfish or woefully devoid of intelligence – three traits that are consistent with the profile of FORMER employees of this firm.”

It’s no wonder in this PC age we end up with safety signs like these two I came across on my travels this year.  I just wished they’d said what they really meant.

Sign 1
‘In the event of a fire in the indoor play area of this theme park, collect your child, leave by the nearest fire exit and proceed up the hill (bearing left at the fork), turn right at the top and head towards the main entrance.  Signed: The Theme Park Safety Officer.’

Yeah because clearly in the event of a fire I’m going to do a runner without my kids, what planet are these people on?  Oh yeah and with all the screaming kids in the room I’m really going to stand there and read it, fools!  My version:

‘If there’s a fire, get your children and get the hell out of here and I’ll see you at the main entrance.’

Sign 2
‘For your own health and safety and, that of the seagulls, please do not feed the birds’.

Man we’ll be doing risk assessments for our flipping wildlife next!  My version:
‘We don’t want loads of seagulls s***ing on our benches and pinching our snap so please don’t feed them.’
 
Maybe this says more about my sense of humour but I’d be more inclined to read the non-PC versions of those signs and pay heed to them, wouldn’t you?

I reckon as a profession we’ve done quite a lot to get rid of stuffiness from safety but thinking back on this year we still have a long way to go. Think one of my work related New Years resolutions will be to tell it like it is when I can, after all a board meeting might not be the place to do it!

EurOSHM Richard Byrne
BSc (Hons), CMIOSH, MIIRSM, AIMEA
rjbyrne@hotmail.co.uk

Richard Byrne is group head of health, safety and technical services at ATS Euromaster and has a first-class combined honours degree in ergonomics and health and safety management, along with 10 years’ broad health, safety and environmental experience. He is a chartered member of IOSH, a member of IIRSM and an associate member of IEMA, and also holds EurOSHM status.

Byrne’s blog – I won’t be a law breaker soon!

My blog this month was all sorted, in my ‘ready to send’ folder when I stumbled across something in my paper that made me stop and think. 

It seems that the Government intend to raise the speed limit on motorways to 80mph in 2013. Their rationale is what you’d expect: the current limit has been untouched for years and vehicle safety has improved dramatically in that time and driving on motorways is ‘safer’ than on other roads.

But in an interview with The Times, Philip Hammond (the Transport Secretary) said that he believes we operate in a ‘democracy of policing by consent’.  He reckons that if 50% of the population are breaking the law then it’s the law that needs looking at and not necessarily the law-breakers.  He’s probably got a point because few people stick to 70 or below on a motorway in my experience.

Predictably road safety campaigns are up in arms about it, but there again they won’t be happy until we’re all pedestrians in any case.  I have to say that I’m with you Phil! You’re a refreshing change! Stupid rules, or rules that are perceived to be stupid, just don’t get followed and frankly we (as a country) don’t enforce this particular law very well anyway do we?  So why have it?

Phil’s argument got me thinking too.  You see at the moment one of my key strategic priorities at work is to do with getting people to work safely because they want to and not because they think if they don’t they’ll get told off by the boss. 

Although we’ve been making progress on this (which is just as well as part of my bonus is riding on it!), I wonder now whether we’ve been coming at it from the wrong angle. Maybe the biggest lever for change is really in understanding what safety rules and processes need to be changed.

Arguably if people choose not to the follow some rules and there hasn’t been an accident surely the rule is a waste of time. I mean, if the rule was to wear eye protection when doing X, and people don’t wear the protection when they should you’d expect there to be more incidents involving stuff getting into peoples eyes when they do it, right? 

If the rule is really important, why hasn’t it been enforced harder either by the line manager or organisationally? After all, organisations don’t make up rules for the sake of it, most consider them very carefully. So if it’s that important it should be enforced. 

Just like if the 70mph speed limit on a motorway is that important there should be more tickets given out but there isn’t. Why? Because the police are too busy dealing with other more serious issues like murder, scum mugging old ladies and drug dealers.

To help me get my bonus (I have a new drive to pay for) we’ve set up some focus groups with front line employees to talk about some of these things (not mugging and drug dealing, I mean safety rules!), and hopefully we’ll come up with some stuff that we can ‘police by consent’. In other words the rules we’re left with are the really important ones rather than what we might have now: really important ones and a whole heap of other non-important stuff that we get upset about when people don’t follow them!  And of course, fewer rules the more chance you’ve got of people remembering them.

So my challenge to anyone reading this blog is to have a think of things from a different perspective: are you too worried about getting people to conform to a rule when what you should be wondering is, is that the right rule is in place? Only when, you’ve confirmed that it is, should you try to change people’s behaviours.

Now I’ve got my head round that, I just need to work out if Phil is Conservative or a Liberal Democrat – after all I don’t want to give credit to the wrong party do I, you only get one vote!

Ah, thank the Lord for Google, he’s a blue!

EurOSHM Richard Byrne
BSc (Hons), CMIOSH, MIIRSM, AIMEA
rjbyrne@hotmail.co.uk

Richard Byrne is group head of health, safety and technical services at ATS Euromaster and has a first-class combined honours degree in ergonomics and health and safety management, along with 10 years’ broad health, safety and environmental experience. He is a chartered member of IOSH, a member of IIRSM and an associate member of IEMA, and also holds EurOSHM status.

Byrne’s blog – I can’t get no satisfaction

11 years ago (I can’t believe it’s been that long!), while still at Uni, I helped out at a friend of my family’s business making lights for the kit and classic car industries.  Mentally taxing it wasn’t but the guys I worked with were fun and most importantly it paid for my weekend drinking sessions!  I’ll always remember two of ‘my’ tasks.

The first involved taking components out of their original perfectly fine packaging and putting them into other perfectly fine packaging and sticking them on a shelf (I know seems like madness but I didn’t question it I just wanted the money!).  The second was taking delivery of, and putting away headlamp shells from India, that used to come in incredibly awkward to stack boxes!

I think I got more ‘instant’ satisfaction out of that job than any of my safety jobs.  Before you start typing your comments to this Blog saying find another job then Byrne, let explain what I mean.

I remember sitting in the back room at the factory on a break from university trying to think how I was going to approach my assignment on QALYs (quality adjusted life years) with a cup of tea and massive pile of boxes to my left containing about 500 chrome headlamp brackets.

My task was simple, remove them from their box and the wrapping, give them a wipe, check for quality, wrap them in new tissue paper and put them into a plain white box (which I had to make up) and then Sellotape two boxes together to make a pair. 

With thoughts of how much a broken arm or a life costs leaving my head, I tried different ways to get this task done as quickly as I could.  I eventually found my rhythm and in no time at all I had a massive pile of inspected, repackaged, ready for sale headlamp brackets on my right hand side.  The satisfaction I got from that was immense.  I felt like I’d achieved something!

Looking back, rarely have I got that level of satisfaction straight away from anything I’ve done in safety. Yes OK writing a paper or risk assessment on something is a good feeling when it’s done, but most of the time our work is only just starting then.  After all in most cases we have to then influence other people to take it forward and implement our work.  But do you know what, that’s the challenge in this line of work:  getting people to do stuff they didn’t realise they needed to do or want to do.  

Not so long ago one of my team redrafted an important policy on driver safety and was dead chuffed when we had it signed off by the steering group we’d pulled together to oversee its review.  Feeling good about the work he’d done (and rightly so) he started talking to colleagues around the organisation for comments with a view to implementing it in a few weeks. Deflated and disappointed he called me one day say that one or two of them thought we were living in ‘cloud cuckoo land’ if we thought we’d get it launched by the date we’d set ourselves. 

Now if you tell me that I’ll never be able to do something, then I’ll do it just to prove you wrong and I confess that I’ve surrounded myself with likeminded people in my team! So I guess it almost goes without saying that the policy was launched slightly ahead of schedule and the person that did most of the work had a great feeling of ‘job done’ and was walking round his native Geordieland with a spring in his step that weekend.

It was interesting watching all this play out in front of me and being a little removed from the situation. Because it dawned on me that satisfaction in the world of safety comes from playing the long game. And we are letting new people to our profession down. Why? Because nobody tells any of this stuff when you’re on your NEBOSH or doing your degree. All you learn there is how to do a risk assessment or work out a QALY and you’re left thinking that’s the end of the process…do this and not only will you pass your course but you’ll be a great safety professional to boot! Man do you come down to earth with a crash!!

There’s a great book that covers some different ways to get safety stuff ‘done’ called Be the Best – How to become a world-class health and safety professional (a snip at £15 from IOSH) by a bloke called Richard Byrne.

Oh that’s me (and I’m not on commission!). You can’t blame me for doing a bit of advertising, right?!

EurOSHM Richard Byrne
BSc (Hons), CMIOSH, MIIRSM, AIMEA
rjbyrne@hotmail.co.uk

Richard Byrne is group head of health, safety and technical services at ATS Euromaster and has a first-class combined honours degree in ergonomics and health and safety management, along with 10 years’ broad health, safety and environmental experience. He is a chartered member of IOSH, a member of IIRSM and an associate member of IEMA, and also holds EurOSHM status.

Byrne’s blog – Come back the News of the World!

The only way I can find to explain how I felt when I heard about the story of Kylie Grimes, is it was like seeing your arch-enemy driving off a cliff … in your new car.

In case you haven’t heard about Kylie, she’s the 23-year-old who, while at a party at a friend’s house, decided to dive into their swimming pool. Trouble was, the pool only had about a metre’s depth of water in it. Kylie unfortunately suffered appalling injuries and she is now, sadly, quadriplegic and has to use a wheelchair to get around.

Kylie was seeking £6 million in compensation from her mate’s dad because he failed, according to Kylie and her legal team, in his duty of care towards her under the Occupiers’ Liability Act. The case was dismissed from court, with Mrs Justice Thirlwall saying: “She (Kylie) was an adult. She did something which carried an obvious risk. She chose, voluntarily, to dive when, how and where she did, knowing the risks involved” adding (according to our friends in the Daily Mail), ‘‘it would not be fair, just or reasonable”.

Now, hopefully, you can see why I have mixed emotions over it all.

I feel incredibly sorry for Kylie, her family and friends – I don’t think I can begin to imagine what they all went through at the time of the accident, or how it is now for them all. But, at the same time, I’m pleased that Mrs JT saw sense and said, actually, Kylie’s mate’s old man can’t be held responsible for her actions.

Talking to colleagues in the wonderful world of personal injury it’s obvious that if someone brings a claim in most cases (irrespective of how dodgy it is) they’ll get a pay-out of some kind – and that is just flipping wrong to me.

If you’re genuinely hurt – yes, you should be compensated, but too many people try it on and get away with it. Trouble is, it’s because of these people that insurance companies and employers start acting in an irrational way towards safety measures to ‘stop it happening again’.

But do you know what really annoys me the most about this case? It’s not the fact that Kylie brought it in the first place – I can understand that it’s hard to accept that because of your own actions you changed your life from one of ‘being able-bodied’ to being quadriplegic – after all, none of us likes to think we made a mistake, do we? Better to blame someone else, right?

The thing that really gets my goat about it all is that the story made the ‘throwaway’ parts of the national news for a day, never to be heard of again, when actually it was a really good safety story – the judge simply said what we practitioners been saying all along (albeit in a roundabout way).

Yet the press left it and the professional bodies, including IOSH, haven’t talked about it either. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not being insensitive to Kylie or her family, far from it, but the story is far more newsworthy than some teacher banning bloody conkers how many years ago?  I really do wonder sometimes what’s going on and why these things aren’t seized on.

Maybe if the News of the World was still around it might run a feature on it – think of the phones they could hack!

EurOSHM Richard Byrne
BSc (Hons), CMIOSH, MIIRSM, AIMEA
rjbyrne@hotmail.co.uk

Richard Byrne is group head of health, safety and technical services at ATS Euromaster and has a first-class combined honours degree in ergonomics and health and safety management, along with 10 years’ broad health, safety and environmental experience. He is a chartered member of IOSH, a member of IIRSM and an associate member of IEMA, and also holds EurOSHM status.

Guest blog – Gary Huckins

Health and safety consultant Gary Huckins looks at some examples of ‘elf n’ safety’ stories and lays out a test to see if you fit the public stereotype for H&S practitioners.

Do you fit the H&S stereotype?

Is there any truth in the publically held stereotypical “elf n safety” officer type?

Consider the following scenarios:

1)    A Safety officer insisted on a contractor having a full permit to work when all he was doing was measuring up for some minor civils work. Even the permit issuer agreed that as long as he knew what the contractor was doing, when he was coming and going, then no permit was needed. However, the procedure stated that “all work” done by contractors needed a PTW. So the safety man insisted on it………

2)    On another job, a major overhaul was underway on a chemical plant. A daily “toolbox talk” was done every morning for the 250 workers. The scheduled TBT for that day was on “workplace bullying”. Sadly, the day before someone had broken a finger when unloading equipment. One of the supervisors had the brass neck to suggest (imagine – telling the safety man his job!!) that the appropriate TBT for that day should be the one scheduled for next Thursday, on hand and finger injuries. The safety manager was sorry, but he had a plan to stick to, and couldn’t change anything in the safety plan – this was a CDM project you know! With that, he walked out of the meeting cabin, proudly clutching his clipboard.

3)    Scaffolders were working in a foundry environment; the heat stress was sky high. They had to wear normal “full” PPE (boots, overalls, helmet with chin strap, safety specs, harness, double lanyard) plus a hot metal suit (thick cloth designed to allow molten metal to spill off it). Along came a suit wearing flunky from head office on a safety tour. He spotted one of the scaffs, up on the fifth lift, with no safety specs on…he was actually demisting them. The scaff was “shouted down” from the structure, sweating buckets, and bawled at for not wearing his safety specs. Unfortunately the irate scaff responded as scaffs tend do. End result – scaffold company manager called into the director’s office and threatened with removal from the site.

And so on. Every month, when we read our copy of the Safety and Health Practitioner (also, most days in certain national newspapers) we encounter “bonkers conkers” stories. Very often, these stories are not truly safety related – often lawyers or insurers are the real villains, not H&S professionals. H&S bets the blame though, more often than not.

However, we have all heard of or experienced situations like those above where the safety man or woman has made a jackass decision. I was involved in all of the incidents; for #1 I was that eejit, for #3 I was the scaffold company manager. Incident #2 I was a bemused witness, not wishing to upset the client’s safety manager. (The client treated all contractors as idiots, giving orders, never asking for or listening to their opinions!)

And how many of us have never come out with a line like “because it says so in the procedure (or regulations, or guidance, etc)”.

The fact is any fool can read the regulations or the ACOP or the procedure. (Regrettably, in my experience, some HSE inspectors nowadays, just point you to the ACOP when you ask their advice or opinion).

If all we had to do was read it from the book, then anyone could do it; you wouldn’t need safety professionals. What we, as professionals are paid to do, is to make judgements and manage the issues. We are allowed to use common sense in making decisions! When we do this, we have to stand up and be counted, and make damn sure that we are sure of our ground.

So, if you feel a jackass moment coming on (often sneaking in on the back of ego), then go ahead – those conkers are downright dangerous. Stop them. Now. Become an eejit, like I did.

Alternatively, use your professional judgement. Involve your colleagues; ask the workers; consult widely. Then make your judgement and be prepared to explain and communicate it.

Now go on and take the quiz to find out if you fit the stereotype!

1) Have you ever owned a Volvo?    YES / NO

2) Do you drive at 43 MPH on all roads at all times? YES / NO

3) Do you possess a jacket with leather elbow patches? YES / NO

4) Do you wear an IOSH lapel badge? YES / NO

5) Do you or have you ever owned a touring caravan? YES / NO

6) Do you regularly listen to music by the Carpenters or Neil Diamond? YES / NO

7) When out socially (eg. visiting a pub or restaurant) do you wear a tie YES / NO or, if female, have a brooch on your jacket?

8) Do you drink “real ale” only? YES / NO

9) Do you ever refer to the Factories act or “reg 7” entries? YES / NO

10)  Do think that there should be more traffic wardens and speed cameras YES / NO

SCORE:- 7-10 “YES” – congratulations, you would have made a great safety officer, possibly 40 years ago

SCORE 4-7 “YES” – you may possibly fit into the “bonkers conkers” brigade

SCORE 1-3 “YES” – you need to get out more

SCORE ZERO “YES” – either you have loads of common sense, or perhaps no sense at all!

Gary Huckins B.Sc (hons) M.Sc CMIOSH
Senior Environmental, Health and Safety Consultant
Integra training and consulting

gary.huckins@sunderland.ac.uk

Byrne’s Blog – Taking my own advice

Sitting here now, drinking a glass of wine and eating pizza sat at the patio table surveying my handy work, you would never know how much therapy I got from getting rid of the decking and transforming the 25 square metre area at the bottom of the garden into a play area for my kids.

And I never thought I’d say that DIY was ‘therapy’ for me.  I’m not one of these blokes who looks forward to doing a bit of DIY, trust me if you’d seen my attempt at tiling the bathroom floor a few years ago you’d know why.  But this once it certainly helped me to get rid of a lot of frustration and aggression during a particularly pressurised few months at work.

When the day of reckoning came I’d planned things perfectly and I started taking the decking apart with the best of intentions.  I put my electric screwdriver (and the one I borrowed from my dad) on charge the night before the great construction project was to begin.  After the first electric screwdriver gave in, the heads on the screws started being awkward and with my back killing I had the thought most people who hate DIY have: Why didn’t I get a little man in to do this!

So muttering to myself I went rooting through my shed (yes I have one and I’m proud of it, at least it’s not a caravan!) to find something to help me get through the task a little quicker.

At the back of the shed I found it, my lump hammer.  Remembering my safety degree and, the field day my colleagues would have if I ended up going into work with an injury, I found some safety glasses and set about ‘smashing’ the decking up.

Sometime after about 15 minutes of swinging the hammer and making some considerable progress (but not enough to down tools for the day) I started to think about what was going on at work and the individual that was causing me so much grief.

Then it happened. Wow, wow, wow. I wanted more it was just like a drug (well what I imagine a drug to be like). All of a sudden, his face was where my hammer was hitting on the decking. Not only did I manage to quicken the pace of work, but all my tension went!  Then it clicked, I’d found a coping strategy that helped me to unwind, and I almost felt my stress go away in an instant.  If I’d found this sooner my life (and that of wife) would have been so much more chilled!

The annoying thing is that I know about ‘stress’, the signs and symptoms and the things to do about it (I’ve even written an article on it for the SHP for God’s sake) but it’s so much easy to spot in someone else and give them advice than to take your own isn’t it.  I always remember me giving one of my mates some advice about the girl he was seeing at the time who was messing him about, I think the conversation went along the lines of “dump her, there’s plenty of fish in sea, let’s have another beer and go fishing!” But when yours is doing it to you it ain’t so easy.

I spoke at a conference recently and in the break I overheard a group of safety types talking about the pressure they were under in light of the cuts in their organisation.  I was about to go over and relive my decking story but decided against it, in case they thought I was some crazed psycho. But I do reckon it’s a shame that we (that’s the Royal we) forget all about our own health despite all our training.

I figure work pressure isn’t going to go away (especially thanks to those bankers that kick-started this recession) and there will always be plenty of candidates to feature on decking the world over, but now mine has gone I’m going to find another more sustainable way to unwind and de-stress.

Wonder if there are any gun clubs near me?

EurOSHM Richard Byrne
BSc (Hons), CMIOSH, MIIRSM, AIMEA
rjbyrne@hotmail.co.uk

Richard Byrne is group head of health, safety and technical services at ATS Euromaster and has a first-class combined honours degree in ergonomics and health and safety management, along with 10 years’ broad health, safety and environmental experience. He is a chartered member of IOSH, a member of IIRSM and an associate member of IEMA, and also holds EurOSHM status.

Guest blog – Richard Byrne

What lies within

A few years ago someone who wasn’t performing in their current training role was dumped on to me because, in the words of my then boss: she’s got her NEBOSH and you’ve been saying you need some more help’. Now this girl didn’t have a bad bone in her body but she was mind numbingly boring and, frankly, a jobs worth.  Oh and to top it all, her dream was to work in safety.  Needless to say I was less than impressed with the situation and I think I actually developed a ‘twitch’.

I must have some sort of homing beacon on me, because since then every role I’ve been in I’ve come across similar people. Each time though I’ve tried to be fair and given them a chance to change, before taking the hard decision to help them find a job better suited to their skill set (I think that’s the HR phase I used). Perhaps becoming an auditor or a traffic warden?

You’ll be pleased to know my twitch has stopped now that I work with a team of great people and my treatment for the removal of the homing beacon seemed to be going well until I went on a safety discussion forum recently.

After all the bad press about some of the people in our profession, you’d have thought the jobs worth’s would have left or had the sense to keep their mouths shut.  Well let me tell you they haven’t, and sadly they’re loud and proud!

A guy put on the forum a post asking for some help in carrying out a risk assessment for a BBQ at his kid’s school.  It’s the sort of thing we all get dragged into, we don’t really want to do it but because we’re in the ‘trade’ we get asked.  A fairly simple request I thought. Trouble is the first four responses were from colleagues picking apart the request and saying that it was going to be unsafe to have alcohol at a school BBQ (makes a change from conkers, mind you they aren’t out until autumn so there’s time yet).  I don’t know about having alcohol at the BBQ, but I needed some vodka when I’d finished reading their rot.

I thought these peer interviews to join the various safety bodies, along with CPD for people already in, were meant to weed these people out.  What’s going wrong?  CPD seems to be more about being able to fill in the online form correctly than what you’re actually doing to continually develop professionally!

I wish I were on the CPD committee (and you know there has to be one!), just after the tea and biscuits I’d put forward a motion to make everyone have a peer review every three years and to demonstrate what they’ve done to advance the profession (to compliment how many Legionella and IT courses they’ve been on). I would also request two confidential references, the first from their gaffer, and the other from one of their ‘customers’, then we’d see who was worthy to be called a safety professional.

Bring it on.

EurOSHM Richard Byrne
BSc (Hons), CMIOSH, MIIRSM, AIMEA
rjbyrne@hotmail.co.uk

Richard Byrne is group head of health, safety and technical services at ATS Euromaster and has a first-class combined honours degree in ergonomics and health and safety management, along with 10 years’ broad health, safety and environmental experience. He is a chartered member of IOSH, a member of IIRSM and an associate member of IEMA, and also holds EurOSHM status.

Editor’s blog – Emergency over – for now

Are there any jobs these days to which the excuse ‘oh, it’s just an occupational hazard’ can still be applied – or accepted? It’s a phrase that is usually bandied about in jest – by the nursery teacher who comes home covered in glitter and paint every evening, or the sweet-factory worker who has just had to spend a fortune down the dentist’s!

But what about the more serious occupational hazards faced every day by thousands of workers, whose jobs require them to weigh up and take risks that most people would deem unacceptable? Unacceptable, that is, to themselves but not so much, apparently, when it comes to others – such as the Police and the emergency services.

In recent years, certain media have engaged in gleeful reporting of incidents in which police officers, or fire-fighters, or paramedics have “stood by” while people got into difficulty, or died – because “health and safety” precluded them from intervening. Such stories have generally been met with howls of protest from the public, claiming that the service in question should simply “get on with doing their job”.
But it never is that simple, is it? Why should emergency-service personnel put themselves at inordinate risk just because of unrealistic public expectation? They are workers like any others and should, therefore, in the course of their duties, be afforded the same protection under health and safety law.

Thankfully, the House of Lords came to the same conclusion, when it was asked last month to repeal parts of the Police (Health and Safety) Act 1997 and thus remove police officers from the scope of the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act. As IOSH said in its statement on the potential impact of such a move, it would have been “a seriously retrograde step”.

Of course, that will not be an end to the matter; there is likely to be further review of the subject at parliamentary level, and, as this issue of SHP went to press, ITV was planning to broadcast a programme asking whether health and safety legislation for 999 crews “has had its day”.

In the meantime, the HSE and the emergency services have worked well together to produce practical guidance for personnel in operational situations. In doing so, they have attempted to create the “clarity of interpretation rather than unnecessary changes to health and safety law” called for by former safety minister, Lord McKenzie, in the Lords debate.

Nobody should be expected to accept danger unquestioningly as part of their job, while everybody should endeavour to be more understanding of others’ roles, and more respectful of their judgement and professionalism.

Tina Weadick
Editor
shpeditor@ubm.com