Good morning all,
In short, our company has to adhere to regional and organizational standards (OHSA & COR 2020, Canada) that are VERY heavily compliance based in nature. We must have control of records for practically everything and at the end of the day, we can expect sometimes well over 80 pieces of documentation from our Construction site supers every week. This documentation ranges from Equipment inspections, daily hazard assessments to weekly jobsite inspections and beyond.
The compliance based side of this ensures that my position as an H&S Coordinator sometimes takes on more of a Compliance Enforcement role rather than a Safety facilitator or educator. I've been trying very hard to normalize error, and have worked it into our compliance statistics (We allow 10% deviation and do not expect perfection.), as well as I've been trying to change our safety culture to be more collaborative and less top-down. In doing so, I'm trying to ensure that our staff have more power with their own H&S than we do; but in doing so I sometimes open up Pandora's box and invite criticism of our Compliance based system, which is required as per COR and our legislating bodies.
I dislike it, and don't believe compliance based systems are a good idea. I came from an old school trade background where I was taught that "Paperwork doesn't make safe work.", because at the end of the day I can document and write hazard assessments until I'm blue in the face, but if I do so out of compliance, not care. There's absolutely no proof to me that any of it works, yet we HAVE to keep using it.
So, I guess the question is: How can I reinforce and keep promoting HOP in our workplace while also adhering to the compliance based system? How can I ensure that we continue to see success on both ends of the spectrum? It feels silly to me that we create processes based around compliance rather than tangible safety; and I have a hard time reconciling this with our staff.
Any thoughts would be more than helpful, and welcome! Thank you.