This review was originally published in SAFETY AT WORK magazine Issue 4-2 22 October 2002
Reviewed by Kevin Jones
Many safety professionals are suspicious of non-Engineering solutions to safety hazards. It is relatively easy to ensure that a machine is guarded or that a scaffold is secure or that PPE is worn. This comfort sone is not the fault of the safety professionals specifically. The Engineering safety process is the dominant form of risk control. The Hierarchy of Controls still dominates our planning and our safety legislation. In fact academics are continuing to create variations on the Engineering concept such as Time Sequence Models and Energy Barrier models.
Work Factors in Suicide challenges this dominance more effectively that any discussions on workplace bullying. This book shows that in many cases of suicide, work was found to have contributed to the act of killing oneself. Engineering cannot prevent a person who is willing to harm or kill themselves. It is this point that throws the challenge to safety professionals and legislators to find control measures for this legitimate workplace hazard.
Recently I was consulting for a prison workshop. The guarding standards and the OHS legislation operates on an assumption that workers do not wish to harm themselves or others. In prison this is not the case. The stories in Work Factors in Suicide also show that this is not the case in other less regimented workplaces.
Some would say that if the suicide did not occur at work then the suicide is not a workplace fatality. This is statistically correct but it is becoming accepted that the effects of work do not end at the factory gate or the office foyer. We take our work pressures into our home life and social pressures into work. The emphasis changes but these two parts of our lives are not mutually exclusive.
The sample is small but critical. The data is extrapolated from Coronial information that is not a formal part of the National Coronial Database that is being established. But it shows what new links in data can be made.
The data is supported by the Urban Ministry Network’s own database of many years of grief counselling and most importantly by victims speaking about the effect that a loved one’s suicide has had on their lives and their futures. It is this element of humanity that lifts the data from statistics into a reality.
In the aftermath of the Bali Bombing and almost 100 Australian casualties, Australians are very sensitive about Death. But we should not ignore death. We should not bluff ourselves that workplace death happens elsewhere. There are several cases in the book where the suicides are a great surprise to the workforce. The signs were there but no one was reading them, no one knew what the signs were.
One case study in particular stemmed from the “passive” suicide of eating disorders as “the work ate away at her self-confidence”. Tracey had no support from management and her distress was ignored. She eventually became a heavy drinker, her family relations eroded and she died alone. The family says that they don’t know if this is a suicide or not but if it is not, it is certainly a work-related death.
Other countries have the luxury not defined in Australian OHS legislation, that there is an Occupational Health and Welfare Act. The omission of Welfare as a clearly defined OHS component has handicapped Australia in addressing work-related suicides.
There are suggestions in the book about the signs that something is amiss with our staff. These are common signs but can accrue to a lethal concoction. Work Factors in Suicide provides essential steps to provide safety for our workers.
The book is timely in that it rides the wave of interest in work/life balance, reasonable working hours, quality of life and respect for others. John Bottomley says elsewhere that many of these issues reflect Christian values but there is no religious presence in the book regardless of the source of the book’s funding. The strength comes from general humanity.
How can we safety professionals address these confronting issues? Firstly, as is often said in Safety At Work, we need to respect our workers and our colleagues. We need to discuss our hazards widely with our Human Resources colleagues. We need to maintain an open mind when considering contributory factors to incidents. We need to acknowledge the value of the psychological perspectives on workplace safety although our considerations shouldn’t be dominated by that perspective.
We ask ourselves questions after there is a workplace fatality involving scaffolds or meat mincers but how hard are the questions when there is no clear cause and effect in the death?
This book provides a different perspective on a hazard that is easy to miss because of our social taboos on Suicide. But it is a worthy perspective to introduce when we are considering addressing workplace stress and workplace bullying. There are some psychosocial hazards for which rehabilition does not work.
There is the old black medical humour that says that Doctors bury their mistakes. We should ensure that we safety managers don’t share the same joke.
Working Factors in Suicide – Evidence for a new commitment in occupational health and safety research, policy and practice, by John Bottomley, Elina Dalziel and Margaret Neith
Published by Urban Ministry Network, Australia, September 2002
ISBN 0 9578041 5 6 Softcover 64pp
Price is to be determined
Information on purchasing copies can be obtained from ringing Urban Ministry Network on 61 3 9527 2283 or by emailing admin@cmn.unitingcare.org.au
Safety At Work magazines was provided with a copy of this book for review.
