safer during a crisis? the surprising consequence of a crazy year

An interesting statistic caught my eye this week. In this year’s Tour De France there were more finishers  (83%) than the 20-year average (81%). So, despite all the disruption caused by Covid-19 during the 2020 season, you were less likely to be injured or get sick this year than in previous years.

This is a trend that has been replicated in the water industry, three major water companies we have worked with during this time have had the lowest lost time injury (LTI) rates since comparable records began. NB: An LTI is an injury sustained by an employee that leads to loss of productive work in the form of absenteeism or delays.

Why?

Now, more than ever, the global pandemic has bought health and safety to the forefront of our minds. Walking on site you will notice the difference in treatment facilities and pumping stations up and down the country. Every single person on site is primed to think ‘healthy and safety first’ from hand washing to challenging whether the maintenance being performed is truly essential. This behavioural change has had a huge positive consequence across the industry. Health and safety incidents are down across the board, as a workforce we are working smarter and safer than ever before. Far from being the spanner in the works or the blockage to the smooth running process, health and safety protocols and procedures have taken on even greater significance and allow us all to do our job secure in the knowledge that the risks have been assessed and mitigated as much as possible.

At a time where there is so much uncertainty in the working environment, this reliance on health and safety and the resulting benefits of an incident free workplace have led utility managers to focus on exactly what is driving the change and striving to capture and replicate these working practices for the long term.

So let’s take a look at the factors that are driving these positive changes.

People First

The way we work has changed beyond measure in the last six months. For water companies, this has meant a return to a core workforce with less reliance on contractors. Restrictions on the number of people on site at any one time results in experienced engineers and those familiar with a particular site making up the largest proportion of the workforce. Everyone knows exactly what their role is and why they are there.

Advance Planning

Maintenance is now challenged and shifted from reactive to planned wherever possible, another consequence of a reduced workforce is that not every task can be carried out all the time. Engineers have had to assess what needs doing and when. This means that there is less work carried out reactively and the workforce are not deployed outside of core hours, for example, into potentially hazardous situations on such a regular basis. This results less tasks being carried out by a tired and overstretched team and has the overall effect of bringing down health and safety incidents over time.

Maintaining Good Practice

It has become apparent that a return to ‘normal’ will be a long time in the future, if at all. Perhaps by the time we get back to normal we will have forgotten what normal looks like. If we are to maintain this drop in health and safety incidents it will be important not to rush back into old habits.

Increased hand washing and the mental check we have all become used to when entering new environments is a useful first step. Just as we stop to put on our masks and sanitise our hands, so we need to include this extra step into our every day site protocols. Many sites have a standard reverse parking procedure in their site car parks, that way vehicles are quicker to move off site in an emergency. How many procedures like this are taken for granted and should be highlighted as good practice? Take time to understand the symbolic acts, routines and H&S priming acts that are helpful and build them into everyday habits.

Challenger Thinking

Think about the number of people working on site at any one time. Do you know who they are and exactly why they are there? If you think about everyone on site as a health and safety risk you will be more likely to maintain an accurate site register and limit the number of people with access to a particular site.

Challenge assumptions about the schedule for regular maintenance tasks. Does non-emergency maintenance need to be carried out during the night? Would it be safer, and potentially quicker, to wait for daylight hours to complete a task. Could delaying a task mean it is completed in a shorter time? Look at how work has been planned over the pandemic period and work out how much future work can be planned in the same way to manage risk.

A Hard Habit to Break

We are constantly being told that it is in all our interests not to overwhelm the NHS. By positioning the health care provision in our country as a valuable, but finite resource, we have all become more aware of our collective responsibility to behave sensibly in our every day lives. This shift in behaviour is filtering through into our working practices and it is up to all of us to make sure we don’t slip back into bad habits. The global crisis we are in has snapped us out of unsafe routines, let’s examine the changes that have been made and make sure they become our new habits. 

This article first appeared in the Winter Edition of the Institute of Water 2020

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