Results of the case study X

THE RATINGS

In addition to the author, four members of the company’s personnel made their own independent assessment using the MISHA method. The results of the assessments are presented in Appendix C. The ratings obtained by each of the evaluators are presented in Table 18.

Table 18. The activity ratings obtained by the evaluators in Case X.

Activity area Evaluator

AU PM SD SR SM x

_

A. Organization and administration 61 61 61 46 72 60.3

B. Training and motivation 51 56 62 49 73 58.2

C. Work environment 54 60 60 56 75 61.3

D. Follow-up 50 57 20 57 70 50.7

Total activity rating 55 59 55 51 73 58.6

AU = author

PM = company’s personnel manager SD = company’s safety director SR = employees’ safety representative SM = company’s safety manager

x

_

= arithmetic mean

The company’s safety manager was most satisfied with the current state of safety activities. He did not find serious deficiencies in any activity area. On the other hand, the safety representative found that there were a considerable number of activities that could be done better. According to him, especially the functioning of the safety organization as well as the training and motivation activities were ineffective. According to the author’s prior experience, safety manager’s and the safety representative’s assessments are seldom uniform. This is probably because the safety manager feels the responsibility of the activities, and is more willing to see that everything is orderly managed. On the other hand, the safety representative who has less formal power, is often more critical. The author received very similar ratings with the personnel manager and the safety director. A major difference occurred only in the follow-up procedures

where the safety director found these activities to be at low level. The reason for this deviation was, however, not possible to clarify.

The author was most critical compared to the others when assessing the quality of the work environment. This can be due to the phenomena that people are often blind to their everyday work environment, and do not see the possible hazards as clearly as an external observer.

RELIABILITY

The strength of the overall agreement between the author and the other evaluators is presented in Table 19. The weighted Kappa coefficient of agreement was used in the calculations. The strength of agreement is based on the definitions of Landis & Koch (1977) (cf. Section 5.3).

Table 19. The overall agreement between the author and the company’s evaluators in Case X.

Author by Value of weighted Kappa (κκκκ_w)

Strength of agreement

company’s personnel manager 0.08 Slight

company’s safety director 0.35 Fair

employees’ safety representative 0.06 Slight

company’s safety manager 0.36 Fair

The reliability computations show that the agreement between the author and the other persons was not very good. Although the ratings of the author were very uniform with those of the personnel manager and the safety director, the inter- observer reliability remained only slight or poor. Thus, by looking only at the ratings it was possible to come to the conclusion that the results are very uniform, while there were in fact several different viewpoints among the auditors.

The author’s assessment was closest to the results of the company’s safety manager. This is a somewhat unexpected result, since the ratings between the author and the safety manager were not very close to each other. On the other

hand, it seems that the author and the safety director identified the same hazards, but the author was more strict in the assessment.

VALIDITY

No validity studies were carried out for the reasons presented in Section 5.3. However, validity was considered by collecting the accident data from the company. This data was then categorized to accident types. After that, the correlation between the audit findings and the accident types was considered. The company’s accident statistics were collected from the past 29 months. The accident data was categorized according to the employee’s activity when the accident occurred, or the surrounding conditions at the time of the event (Table 20). This was the most convenient way for the categorization from the available data. Only accidents that led to an injury to a person are included. First-aid accidents with no lost-days are also included. The accidents that took place while commuting between home and the workplace are excluded.

Table 20. Accident types in Case X, (n = number of accidents, f = frequency).

Accident type n f (%)

Slip of a handtool 34 22

Falling or collapsing object 23 15

Pinching of hand or fingers, caused by a machine 22 14

Flying object or liquid to eye 19 12

Acute low back injury due to lifting 16 10

Slippery walkway outdoors in factory area 11 7

Overexertion injury (excluding back) 6 4

Slippery or uneven walkway inside factory area 6 4

Hitting foot to an object 5 3

Others 15 9

Total 157 100

In order to receive more accident data, all the production departments of the plant where included. The use of this larger data probably does not cause bias,

since the department that was audited was strongly under the influence of the total company management system. For example, the company manager, the personnel manager, the safety director, the employees’ safety representative, and the safety manager were responsible for the whole plant.

The most typical injuries were minor cuts to hands. These were caused by hand tools or the machinery. Moving objects or irritating liquids were the other primary causes for accidents. Physical work load caused only 14 % of the accidents, but resulted 50 % of the lost days.

The correlation between the accident types and the audit results is not very clear. The auditors found most easily the problems related to the implementation of the safety activities, e.g. safety training, management’s safety feedback, campaigns, and follow-up. There was a common understanding among the auditors that the tools and machinery are adequately safe. It can be summarized that more emphasis should be put to safety training, improvement of safety knowledge among the management, motivation to safe work practices by increased management feedback, safety campaigns, and better follow-up of the safety results.