Achieving Health and Safety at Work: The Problems of Evaluating Management Effectiveness
| Published date | 01 February 1983 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb055476 |
| Pages | 16-20 |
| Date | 01 February 1983 |
| Author | Brenda N. Barrett,Hilda Brown,Philip W. James |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Achieving Health and Safety at
Work: The Problems of Evaluating
Management Effectiveness
by Brenda N. Barrett, Hilda Brown and Philip W. James
Middlesex Polytechnic
Introduction
A research team at the Middlesex Polytechnic recently car-
ried out a small-scale study on behalf of the Health and
Safety Executive to investigate the implementation by
companies of certain new provisions of the Health and
Safety at Work Act, 1974. These provisions are contained
in Section 2 of the Act and require employers, inter alia, to
inform and train their employees in safety matters and to
consult on these matters with work-place safety represen-
tatives appointed in pursuance of the Act[1].
The provisions embodied the philosophy of the Robens'
Committee on Health and Safety at Work that the promo-
tion of health and safety was an essential part of good
management and must include the setting up of manage-
ment systems to involve the active participation of the
work force as well as providing for compliance with tradi-
tional Factories Act requirements. In the Committee's
view, further progress in achieving health and safety at
work could only be made through employee involvement
which would overcome the apathy which they believed was
now the primary cause of industrial accidents.
The Act represented a major shift in emphasis in the
legislation for occupational health and safety from pre-
occupation with providing safeguards to protect the health
and safety of employees—although this is still essentia!—
to concern with engaging the co-operation of employees
themselves in the process of accident prevention. It is not
surprising, therefore, that the Health and Safety Executive
felt it would be helpful to them to gain some knowledge of
the means by which and the extent to which employers
were succeeding in carrying out their new duties. By asking
an academic body to undertake the investigation, they
were assured that the confidentiality of the information
would be preserved.
Defining the Project
In the absence of any clear standard of good practice
which has not been defined in the legislation nor through
the courts, the team was commissioned to identify the ac-
tivities which, in their view, managements had to undertake
to carry out their new duties, to evaluate company perfor-
mance of these activities by the expertise of their own
disciplines and to make recommendations.
The activities to be investigated were identified in
general terms in the legislation. Thus:
S.2(2)
(c) refers to information, instruction, training
and supervision;
S.2(3)
requires the employer to have a safety policy;
S.2(4)
(6) and (7) all relate to consultation between the
employer and representatives of employees
on safety issues.
In operational terms the team defined these activities as
comprising three main areas:
(1) Employee communication and involvement:
— the process of communicating safety inform-
tion, including information about the written
safety policy
— the scope of the safety policy
— the provision made for involving representative:
of employees in safety matters;
(2) Training: the method and scope of safety train-
ing, and
(3) Costing: the processes of budgetary control an>
costing of safety activities.
The study aimed to show how far performance of these
activities was a consequence of the coming into force of the
Act, to evaluate company performance of these activities
and to assess the significance of these activities for overall
standards of work-place health and safety.
Defining these research areas determined the composi
tion of the team. Under the leadership of a labour lawyer
the team included two behavioural scientists, a training
specialist, an industrial relations specialist and an
accoun-
tant, with assistance from time to time of a statistician and
computer expert. As it had been agreed with the Health
and Safety Executive that the focus of the study would be
on the new legislation, no attempt was made to evaluate
compliance with traditional factory act legislation and no
one,
therefore, with technical expertise was included. The
inclusion of an accountant was essential not only as
source of information on the nature and extent of com-
pany safety activities, but also as a vital contributor to the
discussion about how to evaluate companies' compliance
with the legislation.
Research Methodology
(A) The Problem of Evaluation
The major problem of the research was how to evaluat
company performance. This article examines some of the
issues which are involved in this process, in the hope than
further discussion of this recurring difficulty of
manage-
ment research will be stimulated.
16 • PR 12,2 1983
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