Sopranos Smallgoods - Safety Culture Improvement System - Case Study Example

CASE STUDY ANALYSIS: SOPRANOS SMALLGOODS By Student’s Name Code + Course Name Professor’s Name University Cite, State Date Table of Contents Executive Summary.....................................................................................................................3 A. Introduction/Legal Responsibilities..................................................................................4 B. Findings & Discussion/ Safety Culture.............................................................................5 C. Recommendations.............................................................................................................9 References List..............................................................................................................................11 Executive Summary The notion of safety culture has over a long period been considered to affect the way operations in organisations are conducted. Employers are obligated to ensure that they adhere to the overall legal responsibilities to their employees in regards to Safe Work Australia Act 0f 2008. They are expected to train, induct and inform their employees on safe work practices and also, ensure that they provide protective equipment for their employees as a way of minimising or even eliminating possible hazardous possibilities in the course of working. Safety culture is a distinctive set of specific beliefs, norms and attitudes as well as social and technical undertakings that are related with the maximisation of exposure of relevant stakeholders to an organisation like the employees, customers as well as the general public at large to certain situations that are deemed to be dangerous or even injurious in nature. A safety culture improvement system is one that should be devised to ensure improvements in safety. This can be done through the creation of safety culture vision, responsibilities, plans & actions, assessment and review and refinement. The recommendations that should be held in place involves devising a reward system, performance management, effective training and development, efficient job designs and, also ensure an effective recruitment exercise at all times to make sure that only skilled and knowledgeable personnel are attracted to the organisation and thus, prevent possible risks of injuries in the future. D. Introduction The idea of a business organisation ensuring a safe workplace for its entire workforce is imperative and determines their respective success levels regardless of their size. On that note, in Australia, each and every business owner or employer has certain legal responsibilities that they should go ahead to implement in relation to the overall health and safety within the workplace environment (Safe Work Australia, n.d). In essence, even in the event that there are no employees for a business, owners are still required to ensure that their daily operations do not create any form of health and safety issues for other stakeholders as customers and the entire public. It is important that employers comprehend the importance of adhering to the Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) laws in order to prevent possible costs and damage to the business operations that relates to workplace injuries and illness (Safe Work Australia, n.d). Some of the notable legal responsibilities that employers should ensure include; They should appropriately and sufficiently induct, inform, train and also, supervise the existing working personnel in order to make certain that safe Occupational Health and Safety practices are fairly comprehended and sustained by all of the employees. They should ensure that they engage in intensive consultation processess with all of the employees in relation to decisions related to the benefit of the OHS within the underlying workplace. They should make sure to avail necessary personal protective equipment (PPE), which is needed for ensuring that the underlying workforce can effectively execute their jobs in a safe and healthy manner. The employers should, in fact, make sure that they conduct rigorous training process that regards proper utilisation of this equipment. They should ensure to ensure constant supervision and analysis of the overall OHS systems and guidelines as a way of ensuring that the workforce is appropriately protected from possible workplace related risks like injuries. They should avail suitable facilities for the immediate welfare of employees. These facilities could include such aspects as availing proper toileting and thus, assist with provision of information as a result of risk assessments on plant and procedures. E. Findings & Discussion Safety culture has been defined in different ways. It is a distinctive set of specific beliefs, norms and attitudes as well as social and technical undertakings that are related with the maximisation of exposure of relevant stakeholders to an organisation like the employees, customers as well as the general public at large to certain situations that are deemed to be dangerous or even injurious in nature (Safety Culture Controversy, 2013). It is also an accumulation of certain attributes, beliefs and attitudes within organisations personnel that is considered to result to possible risks, accidents and ill-health operations (Mikkelsen & Saksvik, 2004). Subsequently, it is perceived to be the immediate result of personal or group’s values, attitudes and, also competencies and degree of behaviours that set to establish the commitment to and the style and level of expertise of a given organisation’s safety and health programs. It is important to ascertain the fact that all organisations that are able to abide and operate under a positive safety culture are showcased by communications that are established on aspects related to mutual trust, shared views of the criticality of matters related to safety and confidence in the degree set to ensure the formulation of preventive measures (Simon & Cistaro, 2009). The process of operationalising safety culture is highly dependent on the intentional manipulation of numerous organisations attributes that are considered to affect the aspect of safety like engaging in risk assessment processess (Gilkey, et l, 2012). These manipulations should be executed in a way that sets to achieve a goal-directed objective, which can be ensured through formulation of specific purposes related to safety culture like ensuring a possible reduction or even elimination of accidents and injuries in workplaces, making sure that the issues affecting safety are given proper level of attention as well as making it certain that the overall organisational workforce are able to share a similar degree of ideas and beliefs in regards to such aspects as risks, accidents and overall welfare of the workplace. It should further ensure that there is improved level of a people’s commitment to aspects of safety as well as setting out to ensure that aspects of style and proficiency of safety program (Simon & Cistaro, 2009). Each of the aforementioned purposes or rather goals should be perceived as unique sub goals that will help to improve the organisations achieve its overall super-ordinate objective of developing a safety culture and goals accomplishment that emanates from the creation of this culture (Simon & Cistaro, 2009). Following this line of argument, then it can be said that the development of a safety culture would therefore mean the achievement of the super-ordinate goals, which is subsequently accomplished by way of dividing the overall task into sections of distinctive sub goals like the process related to auditing safety management systems, provision of safety training, which assists the workforce to gain needed attention and reasonable actions towards the management of safety processess (Simon & Cistaro, 2009). For improvement purposes, a safety culture improvement system is necessary. The system should be made up of five aspects that include; safety culture vision, responsibilities, plans & actions, assessment and review and refinement. A safety culture vision should always be emphasised and formulated. It is similar to the general aspects of health and safety related policies. This improvement aspect should be set in a way that constantly aims at improving the overall safety culture in search of an almost perfection operational environment Simon & Cistaro, 2009). The vision should be formulated in a way that defines a positive form of safety culture. Responsibility is an aspect of safety culture improvement mechanism that should ensure that there is imminent accountability of different fundamental groups in developing and sustaining a positive safety culture (Simon & Cistaro, 2009). Safety culture theories postulate that different degree of organisational hierarchy depicts distinct influence on the overall safety aspect. The levels are differentiated into responsibilities. For instance, the different responsibilities that can be included for improvement for purposes are outlined as below; Executives & Senior Managers: should provide leadership and commitment to safety, communicate, formulate and effect notable organisational safety-beliefs and values within a unique dialogue culture, depict a positive attitude towards safety, as well as exercise transformational and mentoring management styles (Simon & Cistaro, 2009). Middle Managers: are expected to provide visible form of leadership and a profound commitment to safety, avail constant communications on aspects related to safety-beliefs and values, pose a challenge on possibility of safety issues, and also portray a positive attitude matters related to safety (Simon & Cistaro, 2009). Supervisors: should at all times work towards the promotion of a safety culture and be perceived as having a personal commitment towards physical safety-related behaviours at all times (Simon & Cistaro, 2009). In regards to plans and actions, the safety culture could be improved by adopting an effective process of reviewing the existing practices like the immediate utilisation of a safety culture tool. The management of the meat firm should use it to formulate both short and long term safety culture improvement goals (Simon & Cistaro, 2009). They also need to specific distinctive processess that will be able to oversee a positive safety culture environment for the workforce in place. Notwithstanding, there should be links provided for additional aspects related to SMS like activities related to training as well as formulating and implementation of incident reporting frameworks (Simon & Cistaro, 2009). The creation of plans and strategies for improvement purposes involves a dynamic approach. It mostly portrays the importance of changing management systems in order to provide relevant assistance to a desired safety culture. For instance, perceived management commitment can be improved by way of availing managers with the relevant and reliable skills and knowledge needed for becoming effective and safety leaders, motivate these mangers to engage in the alteration of monitoring performances as well as ensure to reward effective performances at all times (Simon & Cistaro, 2009). Recently, in Australia, there has been increased recognition put towards the immediate call to address work factors that are able to influence the level of health and wellbeing with distinctive focus being on creating strategies related to worker injury prevention models. In essence, for most Australian-based businesses it is found out that work stress results to a significant level of enormous costs for matters related to health and productivity. The increased perception to protect the worker on psychological level results from the potential negative end results that might be attributed to psychosocial risk presented at the workplace. According to Dollard et al (2012, p.23) argue that a psychosocial safety climate theory can acts an intervention for safety culture improvement amongst employees. At higher levels of PSC (psychosocial safety climate) theory, it is believed that managers will remain alert on distinctive risk factors and this will enable it to reshape the existing jobs to a place where demands are deemed to be manageable while resources available adequately provided. The theory is considered to be an item of a given organisation and is vehemently formulated and controlled by the senior most managers (Bellè, Carreri, Miele, & Murgia, 2013). It is further argued that worker participation programs in stress controlled environment remain highly influenced by such aspects as workplace policies and practices. In its entirety, PSC is a significant element that enhances moderation of the relationship that exists between work conditions, health and engagement results (Dollard et al, 2012). It helps to improve on employees’ perception towards embracing their respective job demands through the provision of reliable and workable policies and practices as enhancing flexibility within the workplace or even identify the opportunities needed for purposes of debriefing after a series of emotionally challenging experiences. In workplaces where the level of PSC is maintained at a higher position, there is underlying opportunity to improve on the level of capacity that might act to reduce the demands of employee health outcomes. In essence, it is able to act as a safety signal that would always alert the entire workforce of when it is considered safe to exhaust the readily-available resources (Dollard et al, 2012). Research surveys conducted in a multi-occupational population sample of a certain number of Australian workers, posited the correlation between psychosocial safety climate as a direct moderator of job demands relating to significant levels of emotions and work pressure and, worker depression levels. It was found out that PSC acted to moderate the relationship at equal levels with other known resources like job control as well as social support aspects. Notably, Dollard et al (2012, p.23) further argues that psychosocial safety climate theory can act as a primary target for intervention of behavioural improvements. The theory depicts dual functionality position that it can be used to prevent possible work stress levels amongst employees through adoption of job design mechanism and, also on a secondary platform to prevent significant impacts on identified work stressors. Thus, the literature review proposes the fact that immediate formulation and implementation of PSC model will held decrease or eliminate the stress levels hence improve on work productivity and attitudes (Dollard et al, 2012). It thus goes without saying that PSC model is indeed an effective and workable target for both primary and secondary intervention that help minimise possible hazards. Cooper (2002, p31) argues that adoption of Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) helps to attain improvements on cognitively related antecedents such as goals and objectives, behaviours and consequences like self-evaluative rewards mechanisms set in place. It also emphasises on the application of observable variables for assessment functionalities. The aforementioned principles, as put forth by SCT, are considered to be highly appropriate to matters related to a positive safety culture especially in relation to the domain subjected to managerial decision making process, which is a fundamental platform whereby imminent failures are able to penetrate the activities of an organisation (Parker, Lawrie, & Hudson, 2006). F. Recommendations First, the CEO of Sopranos should ensure that there is extensive training and development offered to front line supervisors (Bowie, 2010). The supervisor safety leadership training and development should be offered to each of the existing supervisors while ensuring that it is customised to meet individual needs as can be recognised through a 360 degree evaluation model (Tharaldsen & Haukelid, 2009). There should also be continuous or rather an ongoing training that is availed to them. Effective training and development for supervisors will help ensure that skills related to manual handling practices are adhered to at all times while working. Second, the firm can opt to devise and implement a stringent recruitment exercise that will foster a subsequent job design. The firm employs over 250 employees who seem not to understand the basic safety culture while working (Bowie, 2010). It will thus be a positive aspect to engage in retrenching and recruiting new personnel with relevant experiences in the meat industry. The recruited staff will thereafter be assigned to different job posts depending with their immediate skills and qualifications. It is important to understand that the fact that the ability to recruit new staff will help curtail the possibility of future risks attributed to such inappropriate behaviours as careless removal of blockages while the mincer is still in operations or even workers forgetting to wear their respective protective gears. Notably, an effective job design will allow managers to formulate and implement a fairly-comprehensive program that will ensure that they conduct extensive and frequent visits to sites in order to evaluate the working scenarios while at the same time providing relevant feedback that will be used for future improvements (Tharaldsen & Haukelid, 2009). Third, the current job design should be narrowed down to involve designs that enrich the jobs. Presently, it can be seen that the workers seem not act in accordance with the set out safety rules and regulations despite the fact that there are supervisors overseeing their operations. An enriching job design will give the employees duties that are generally allotted to personnel at the highest level of the organisation (Bowie, 2010). For instance, some of the front line staff can be given allocated duties that are handled by middle-level managers like reporting possible misconduct to the senior management. This framework helps to motivate the employees by assisting them to feel more needed and valued in the day-to-day operations and as a result, foster safe working conditions. Fourth, the firm need to formulate and implement a fundamental and reliable performance management structure. The management should come up with a process of assessing the underlying performance structure through the identification of strengths and weaknesses. They should ensure to meet with the junior managers and employees on an individual capacity in order to provide feedback, and thereafter discuss aspects of performance in order to agree on certain goals and objectives (Arezes & Miguel, 2003). The recommendation will assist to report on safety barriers being eliminated as a way of speeding up production processess. Fifth, it is also recommended that an effective reward system is put in place to motivate the front line staff that work extremely better in their respective duties. A reward system will ensure instant reporting of any malpractices amongst supervisors and junior workers and, as a result make it certain that positive behaviour is rewarded while negative one is punished at all times. References List Arezes, P.M. & Miguel, S.A. 2003, ‘The role of safety culture in safety performance measurement’, Measuring Business Excellence, vol.7, no.4, pp. 20-28 Bowie, P 2010, 'Leadership and implementing a safety culture', Practice Nurse, vol. 40, no. 10, pp. 32-35 Bellè, E, Carreri, A, Miele, F, & Murgia, A 2013, 'Vulnerability at Work: (Un)Safety Culture in Temporary Jobs', Journal of Workplace Rights, vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 153-174 Cooper, D 2002. Safety culture: A model for understanding &quantifying a difficult concept. Professional Safety, p.30-36 Dollard et al 2012. The Australian Workplace Barometer: Report on Psychosocial Safety Climate and Worker Health in Australia, The University of South Australia, Retrieved on September 24, 2015 from http://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/sites/swa/about/Publications/Documents/748/The-Australian-Workplace-Barometer-report.pdf Gilkey, DP, del Puerto, CL, Keefe, T, Bigelow, P, Herron, R, Rosecrance, J, & Chen, P 2012, 'Comparative Analysis of Safety Culture Perceptions among HomeSafe Managers and Workers in Residential Construction', Journal of Construction Engineering & Management, vol. 138, no. 9, pp. 1044-1052 Mikkelsen, A. and Saksvik, P 2004, ‘The relationship between systematic OHS management and sick leave’, Journal of Occupational Health and Safety-Australia/New Zealand, vol.20, no.2, pp. 169-179 Parker, D., Lawrie, M. and Hudson, P. 2006, ‘A framework for understanding the development of organizational safety culture’, Safety Science, vol.44: pp.551-562. Rutter, A 2007, 'A Study of the Organizational Safety Culture of the Electricity Distribution Industry in New South Wales: Identifying Organizational Safety Culture', International Employment Relations Review, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 59-67. Safe Work Australia. N, d. Establishment of Safe Work Australia. Retrieved on September 23, 2015 from http://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/sites/swa/about/pages/about 'SAFETY CULTURE CONTROVERSY', 2013, Industrial Safety & Hygiene News, vol. 47, no. 10, pp. 22-24. Sadullah, Ö, & Kanten, S 2009, 'A Research On The Effect Of Organizational Safety Climate Upon The Safe Behaviors', Ege Academic Review, vol. 9, no. 3, pp. 923-932. Simon, SI, & Cistaro, PA 2009, 'Transforming Safety Culture', Professional Safety, vol. 54, no. 4, pp. 28-35. Taylor, M 2014, 'Changing the Culture to One of Safety', Laboratory Equipment, pp. 8-10. Tharaldsen, J, & Haukelid, K 2009, 'Culture and behavioural perspectives on safety - towards a balanced approach', Journal of Risk Research, vol. 12, no. 3/4, pp. 375-388 Read More