HR Newsletter 02.06.09

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HR news items at - 2nd June 2009

Topical Items

You may be thoroughly fed up with reading about the swine flu virus. Yes it is serious but no, it is not cause for panic. Just tell your employees, especially if they behave otherwise, to use then discard paper tissues, wash their hands regularly and phone their GP surgery before coming in to work if they think they may have caught the virus. For your part you should have some boxes of tissues available to sell to forgetful employees, and sterilise regularly all commonly touched hardware such as telephones, photocopiers and doorknobs.

But the issue that you should treat as both important and urgent is – how would your organisation cope if lots of people were absent as a result of the virus? Indeed this is not particularly topical because you really should consider how you would keep things going if there were any event that caused high absenteeism such as transport disruption or severely bad weather. So why not form a small working group to consider the issue. Are sufficient people trained to cover key tasks? If not can you readily outsource them in some way? Have you got backups of vital data that can be accessed remotely by housebound but otherwise fit employees? Can you maintain effective communication with customers and suppliers even if it is only to explain why they are encountering problems? Goodwill is critical at such times. Your customers may be totally sympathetic to your problems but, if they need the goods that you cannot supply and they are not reassured, they may go elsewhere and not come back. So treat the virus hoohah as an opportunity to make general contingency plans.

Danger lurks!

While we can, and indeed should, marvel at the wonder of Creation, nevertheless it would not pass a health and safety inspection. The world is a dangerous place. Our ancestors probably managed quite well swinging from trees with, perhaps, the occasional fall, but the more we develop our civilisation the more hazards we create, though seemingly with a diminishing ability to deal with them.

Two problems that we have with health and safety are first that it is a boring topic and second that accidents will not happen to us. Taking those issues in order – health and safety is in fact quite interesting if you take the trouble to study it. It requires you to look, consider, maybe do a bit of problem solving and then apply an effective solution. This is rather like acting out a detective story, though before a crime is committed. As to accidents not happening to us, well, you really should take on board the well tested scientific theory that things that can go wrong will go wrong. Your time will come - if you are not already in traction or intensive care.

Another well honed piece of wisdom that you would do well to accept is that, if someone you are with uses the phrases “health and safety” and “common sense” in the same sentence, flee the area because you are in a danger zone. The reason for this is two-fold. First, common sense is not common in the sense that everyone understands it in exactly the same way. We each have a different perception of what is right and wrong, good or bad and all points in between. What I think is the most sensible route to drive to Wales on a bank holiday, or what I recommend as the most sensible way to invest your money, each of these may seem a complete act of lunacy to you. And while our own good sense guides us well in the area where we have been trained and have sound experience, it may well let us down if we use it to deal with situations outside that area. And that really sums up the problem of health and safety – we can only deal with it well if we are adequately trained and experienced, or if we follow closely the rules, regulations and advice provided by people who are.

In some ways major hazards are easier to deal with because they are obvious. We recognise them readily and expect to find foolproof measures for protecting us from them. If we see someone cleaning the external windows of a tower block we expect, and indeed assume, that they will be roped to the building in a harness. Similarly if we go rock climbing then, assuming we are not expert leaders, we will expect that someone will tie a rope around our waist and hold the top end of the rope to hold us in case we slip. And if we take a careful look at the steps that are taken to safeguard maintenance fitters working on high voltage electrical circuits, we will readily recognise the wisdom of padlocking the switches in the off position such that nobody other than the workers themselves can turn on the power.

The smaller hazards are more problematic, largely because we do not recognise them but also because we do not appreciate the damage they can cause to the human frame. Safety goggles are uncomfortable, restrict vision and are a fiddle to find and put on just to grind a slightly blunt chisel, but someone who has lost an eye because a piece of hot metal hit their eyeball will now see their value. Safety footwear is clunky and does nothing for one’s sartorial image, but someone who has lost the front of one of his trainers containing his toes when a steel bar dropped onto his foot is likely to be enthusiastic in telling other people to wear them. And it is difficult to not feel ridiculous wearing a hard hat if it is not an everyday item of work wear – but take a look at pictures of people who failed to don one but were hit by a falling brick or fell off a stepladder.

A question that, if you hear it, should drive you to anger is “who is responsible for health and safety?” The answer is “you are”. Or more accurately “everyone is”. Certainly the senior executives of any organisation have a responsibility in law for everyone who comes into contact with the organisation including employees, visitors, customers, people on the highway whom your drivers may hit, and these days, quite apart from their general duty of care under the Health and Safety at Work etc Act and allied legislation, they have to contend with the spectre of corporate manslaughter. Certain people in the organisation may have specific health and safety responsibilities assigned to them, for example safety officers, quality testers, chemical analysts and product designers. But without anything necessarily having been mentioned, every manager at every level is responsible for the employees under his or her control and anyone else who comes into contact with the section. And finally, but in some ways most important, every employee is responsible for the health and safety at work of him or her self and anybody he or she comes into contact with. Any of these people may be prosecuted under criminal law for a failure to exercise this responsibility that resulted in an injury, and may be sued under common law for damages by injured persons. If you have any doubt about this, listen to the advertisements by solicitors saying “If you have been injured at work, you may be entitled to compensation, so contact us. Our services are free”. Free? Surely someone pays? Indeed someone does. You, if your negligence caused an injury.

What this means is that, throughout the area of your responsibility – that is both the geographic and managerial area – identify the hazards, big and small. Ideally remove them. If that is not reasonably practicable, isolate them from people. And if that is not on, then train your people thoroughly how to manage them. This in turn may require you to write procedures, rules and training programmes, all backed up with a threat of serious disciplinary action for failing to follow them. In some areas – a simple office operation for example – you may be able to do this yourself, or rather with the involvement of your own people. But otherwise call for, and if necessary scream for, expert help to do the job properly. The expert may be a health and safety officer or an appropriate specialist such as a chemist or engineer. Another expert may be someone who, unlike most other people, is particularly vulnerable. For example, if you employ a pregnant woman, you need to carry out a formal hazard assessment of the area in which she will work or may travel. By all means have a look around yourself or call in a specialist but, unless you yourself have been pregnant recently, have the woman tour the patch with you to point out what she considers might be hazardous for her. A male cannot possibly understand the physical or psychological impact of pregnancy. Finally another source of sort-of expertise is someone who has no knowledge whatsoever of your area or what you do in it. They are more likely to spot items that they consider hazardous, but that you consider are not hazardous to anyone with common sense. Get them fixed!

Failure to recognise the folly of relying on common sense can result in you getting injured, and at work it can mean injuries to the people whose health and safety is your responsibility. Hopefully you have in place procedures for dealing with major and easily recognisable hazards. But many injuries, a great deal of distress and costly absences may be caused by relatively small hazards as people fall off insecure ladders, use tools or office machines improperly and trip over obstacles or slide on slippery floors. You need to make a thorough inspection of the whole area for which you are responsible and deal with any discovered hazards promptly and properly. Remove them, isolate them, or train your people to handle them. And if you want to get your people really involved, have a competition with an attractive award for the employee who can identify the most hazards. Remember – everyone is responsible for health and safety so make that clear to them, and make sure that you are seen to give it the importance that it demands.

If you need an update on the latest legislation or would like to know who carries the can under the Corporate Manslaughter & Homicide Act then you can either attend our two hour Manager Updates costing £49 plus VAT (dates in September, October and November)  or take our new online Health & Safety Course. 

Visit http://www.learnhr.co.uk for further details.

Use your brain

If you use a computer software package such as Word you probably have become aware that it can do so many things, yet you use only a small number of them. Well, the brain is rather like that. It can do an awful lot for us yet we greatly under-use it. However it is not at all difficult to improve the use we make of our brains so in this article we will have a look at a few simple techniques that, if we adopt them as routine, will have a significant impact on our mental agility.

The first of these is to adopt an automatic procedure for resolving problems if solutions are not obvious. Too often in these circumstances we make a stab at a solution with little if any thought or we procrastinate. Instead, spend time clarifying the problem. Ask yourself why the problem exists. And why is that a problem – and so on until you reach the root cause. For example customers complain that their telephone calls “are never answered”. An exaggeration, no doubt, and you may feel that a reprimand to the clerks in the office is called for. But why are some calls not answered promptly? – because the clerks may be away from their desks. Why? – because they have to take papers to other desks. Why? – because other people have to then work on those papers. So rather than the problem being slackness on the part of staff it is that arrangements should be made for work to be conveyed without clerks leaving their desks. Having clarified the problem, consider the options, then reject any complete no-no’s. List the pros and cons of each of the remaining options. Evaluate these and pick the best. What you come up with may not be ideal, but is the best available and that really should be good enough. This may seem long-winded but try it out on the next batch of difficult problems you have. Practise it often enough and it will become your instinctive way of dealing with any issue, large or small.

Another, much simpler way that sometimes works is to think carefully about the problem, then put it out of your mind. Sleep on it ideally and you may find that the solution leaps at you next morning. If you have doubts, try doing a challenging crossword in the evening. Struggle with it for a while, then go to bed. You are likely to find that several answers pop up as soon as you pick up the puzzle over breakfast because your subconscious mind has been working on it.

Another good way to solve problems is brainstorming. Present the problem to a group of people and ask them to call out any suggestion or thought, however ridiculous, that may lead to a solution. Do not judge or comment on anything until the suggestions dry up. The beauty of this approach is that people are encouraged to give free rein to their minds, and one person’s daft idea may trigger a more useful thought in another. If the perfect solution does not emerge, at least you have a lot of ideas, a selection of which may enable you to construct an adequate solution. Brainstorming is usually described as a group activity but there is no reason why you should not brainstorm a problem yourself. Just take a large sheet of paper and jot down thoughts as they come to you. Don’t attempt to structure but do write something down even if you abbreviate.

An extension of this technique is mind-mapping, which is an excellent way of getting your thoughts down on paper before you prepare a report or speech. In fact the articles in this newsletter were drafted as mind-maps. You would do well to read a good book on the subject – one by Tony Buzan for example – but put simply you write your topic in a circle in the centre of a piece of paper, then start thinking and, as you do, write down single words to represent each thought. Draw a line and write the next, connected thought as a single word. You should finish up with something that looks like a map of streams and rivers that flow into each other and finally into a central lake, each line carrying a word. By doing this, and if necessary redrawing it to get all associated thoughts onto the same stream, you should find it simple to write your report or prepare your speaking notes. A mind-map is also a good way to make and store notes. You should be able to glance at the mind-map and absorb information much faster than reading linear notes. Mind-map is a good title because it really does reflect the way our brains work. If you are not so sure, before the next two new journeys you make, write out the directions for one and read them before you depart. Before the second, just look at the map. The chances are that you will need to look at the map much less frequently than you refer to the notes. Our mind takes in and holds pictures and diagrams more readily than words.

And last of all, maintain a combined diary and to-do list. As necessary have lists for the various sectors of your work and life generally. A major cause of stress is not the volume of work we have to do but not being able to remember everything and maintain a sound sense of priorities. So buy a proprietary system or make your own from a notebook and list everything that you need to do, big and small, important and less so. Then each day ideally but certainly each week go through your list, mark the priorities, and bring them forward into your diary, recognising that you will need time for interruptions and unforeseen problems.

Some of this stuff may seem like common sense, but do you use it? At least give these techniques a try and consider the results. I think you will find that your brain is smarter than you are!

Puzzle

Last month you were left with the following problems:

A piece of string 24,000 miles long is stretched around the world fairly close to the Equator but, by some strange power, hovers one inch above the surface. A man who was looking for a piece of string to tie a parcel cut the string, pulled it tight onto the surface of the globe, cut off the surplus and carefully joined the two ends again. The question is - how much string did he obtain for his parcel?

You need a bit of simple geometry for this one. The circumference of a circle is 2pr, or 2 x 3.142 x the radius of the circle. If you are suspicious of maths, draw a circle, mark a piece of paper with the length of the radius, then see how many times it fits around the edge of the circle. It’s roughly six times. Since the radius was reduced by one inch, the circumference, that is to say the length of string, was reduced by 2 x 3.142 x 1 inch = 6.284 inches. So the man gained less than seven inches of string. Let’s hope he had only a small parcel.

How about this one.

You are outside a room that is lit by three light bulbs, each controlled by its own switch on a board outside the room. You cannot see into the room from the switchboard. By entering the room just once, how can you determine which switch controls which light bulb?

Answer next time. Byeee!

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