FOOD FOR THOUGHT FROM A 2009 NOSHCON SPEAKER

In one scene from the movie “Precious,” we see the main character, Clarisse Precious Jones, getting ready for school in the morning. We see this obese African American teen put on a red headband—but looking in the mirror, we see the red headband on a pretty, thin blonde teen. She picks up and puts on jewelry—and we see the blonde teen wearing the jewelry. Although Precious is in reality an overweight child of color, she sees a thin, blue-eyed blonde in the mirror, because she is looking at herself through unrealistic filters—what I call distorting goggles.

I often see a similar phenomenon when looking at management systems—the person in charge of the system has rose-colored glasses on, looking at everything that’s right about the system, and overlooking the not-so-nice. What's worse, is that they often don't see reality at all, but instead see what they want the system to be. Like Precious, these quality managers view their management system through distorting goggles.
Why do people see distorted reality? When looking at a system for the first time, I am usually able to walk in with no preconceptions of what I’ll see. Will the system be robust, innovative, weak, or bureaucratic? I don’t know. There are no distorting goggles in place, coloring the way I look at this system. The next time I look at the system, I may have some preconceptions—“The objectives/targets implementation system is very strong” or “Calibration seems to be a problem for them.” It’s a bit harder to set these preconceptions aside, to remove the distorting goggles and be totally objective. If a trained quality professional, exposed to the system for short period of time has this problem, it’s no wonder that people who work within the system day in and day out develop preconceptions about their own system. It’s our responsibility to recognize that this is a common problem and work to ensure that it doesn’t affect our system.
Although we say that information on a system won’t affect our viewing or assessing of it, human nature shows that we may let it affect our actions as well as our thoughts. A study was done in an elementary school class: The researchers told the teacher ahead of time who the high-performing students were and watched how the teachers interacted with them. Although the teachers professed to have no bias toward any of the students, they were noted as showing these identified "smart" students more attention, scolding them less than others, and so forth. These students indeed scored well on their tests. The irony, of course, was that the students identified as high-performing were actually mid-to low-performing students. However, the teacher treating them as though they were scholastic stars pulled the students’ scores up significantly, and in many cases, the students’ view of themselves. The teachers had put on distorting goggles and acted according to what this distortion showed them.
The same holds true of auditors who have preconceptions about an area or facility that they are auditing. If an auditor reads an audit report and notices that employees aren't aware of the policy, or that documentation is not being followed, they may subconsciously develop a bias about what they may or may not find when conducting the audit.
What are some ways to get around this—how can we remove the distorting goggles? One way is to have someone else look at your system and give you a scorecard (both positives and negatives). A fresh set of eyes—an independent auditor—is helpful in seeing how your system is performing more objectively than you may be able to do yourself. A word of caution: Even external auditors, if not rotated occasionally, may become susceptible to wearing distorting goggles over time.
Let me give you an example: When I was the management representative at IBM, we were registering the facility of 9,000 employees, and the schedule called for the external auditors to stay in one area for a long time. The development auditors stayed in development; the manufacturing auditors stayed in manufacturing; and the office auditors stayed in the office.
At the end of two weeks (remember, 9,000 people, so we had four auditors for a month), one of the auditors came to me to let me know that they were going to be rotating audit paths every week for the remaining two weeks. I asked him, “Is this so you can get experience in all areas of the facility?” He told me, “No, it’s because an auditee got stuck today trying to access your documentation system and I told him how to do it: ‘Press F1, then scroll down and select the document, then….’ I realized I knew the system too well and was anticipating what I’d see. I’d like to go somewhere where I’m not the process expert.”
He had interviewed an average of four to six people a day, and because our documentation system was online, he’d watched approximately 50 people access the system before this latest auditee got stuck. Although it is helpful to have an auditor that is familiar with the system so you don’t have any learning curve to climb, you also have to balance this against the fact that an auditor can anticipate what they’re going to see and possibly miss something that they shouldn’t.
Another way to get around this is to pretend that you don’t know anything about the system, and act as though you’re a first-day hire. In the TV show "Undercover Boss," that’s exactly what the top executive does: He comes into the lowest levels of the organization and works in a variety of jobs. It invariably opens his eyes to the good, the bad, and the ugly. You can take a similar approach by asking “Why do we do it this way?” “How would I find instructions on how to do this job?” “What measurements do we need to take? How often? Why?”
Asking these questions and understanding why we are doing what we are doing will allow us to identify areas for improvement, areas of excellence, and areas where we can be a little more objective. Just maybe, it will help us remove distorting goggles.

About The Author
Mary F. McDonald is CEO and CTO of the McDonald Consulting Group Inc. (www.mcdcg.com) and blogs about process improvement at www.improvemybusinessnow.com. She’s been helping companies streamline their businesses and implement management systems since 1995. She’s the author of five books, a member of the U.S. TAG for both ISO 9001 and ISO 14001, and a frequent speaker at conferences and seminars. She may be contacted at marymcd@mcdcg.com.

HIV/Aids in the Workplace

Tsebo takes wellness to heart

Alan Brand, Group Wellness Manager (HIV/AIDS) of Tsebo Outsourcing Group, has been instrumental in the development and implementation of the Group’s AIDS Management Programme. Through the programme, Brand and his team of Peer educators strive to increase and maintain awareness of HIV/AIDS among Tsebo staff. Living openly with his HIV status, Brand has helped to change the mindsets of many, and has pioneered the business to business approach in addressing the nutritional needs of people living with HIV and AIDS. Here, he discusses the issue that affect our industry . . .

I am undoubtedly a very optimistic guy. Yet despite my optimism about essentially everything in existence, I'm beginning to think the term "chronic, manageable condition," when applied to HIV/AIDS, may be overly optimistic - or at least misleading - particularly for many of us who are HIV positive and struggling to co-exist with a virus that wants nothing more than to plant us six feet under!

If you're involved in the management of HIV/AIDS in the workplace you will be aware that, although treatment has provided the tools to greatly improve the health and prognosis of many, it would be far from the truth to say that all is under control.

While I admit that many of us who are HIV positive no longer feel we have one foot in the grave, I wonder: Do we really have a "chronic, manageable condition?" Personally, I tend to think of halitosis, haemorrhoids or even "the heartbreak of psoriasis" as examples of chronic manageable conditions. But HIV/AIDS? I'm not so sure.

In South Africa we have the largest number of people accessing treatment for HIV than any country in the world - we also have the highest number of people infected with HIV in the world. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region most heavily affected by HIV. In 2008, sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 67% of HIV infections worldwide, 68% of new HIV infections among adults and 91% of new HIV infections among children. The region also accounted for 72% of the world’s AIDS-related deaths in 2008.

Much has been written about the virtues of life-sustaining drugs – called Antiretrovirals or ARVs – with the authors proclaiming that HIV/AIDS is now a "chronic (ongoing), manageable condition", like hypertension or diabetes. ARV advertising campaigns fuel this notion with glossy photos suggesting that taking pills would transform a frail HIV positive individual. This might be true - but it is not a holistic picture, because without careful monitoring, care and support, ARV therapy can increase the risk of heart disease, diabetes and many other additional complications.

Workplace programmes that simply provide ARV treatment without ensuring a holistic employee wellness management approach will result in a greater chance that patient will become non-compliant. Ensuring that base line cholesterol, blood glucose levels are conducted, as well as regular monitoring and evaluation of kidney and liver function, are all key to holistically managing the wellness of the HIV patient.

In 2002/3, the Department of Health (DoH) conducted a national research project that investigated the impact of HIV/AIDS on the hospitality sector. This research project consisted of two parts:

• A Knowledge, Attitudes & Practices (KAP) Survey, conducted among 4 500 employees; and
• An assessment of the impact of HIV/AIDS on 450 businesses

Results clearly pointed to the hospitality sector's critical need for practical tools and guidance on developing and actioning an HIV/AIDS strategy. For management to better understand the dire need for wellness programmes in the HIV arena, they need to know the effects of HIV/AIDS on any business, which include:

Increased costs:
• Insurance
• Training
• Recruitment
• Administration
• Medical care

Reduced productivity:
• Illness
• Family care/concerns
• Funeral leave
• Labour turnover
• Absenteeism
• Low morale

Concerns for the hospitality industry in particular include the fact that it is labour intensive; training costs are high; it has largely a mobile workforce; many employees are young and single; and there are a high number of unskilled workers. Customers' perceptions too, need to be managed – including ignorance about the transmission of HIV/AIDS and perceived risks.

The Tsebo Outsourcing Group Employee Wellness and Assistance Programmes recognise that personal and family problems can negatively influence work performance as well as affect employees, colleagues and supervisors. The most effective response to these problems is early intervention, especially when it comes to complying with medicine regimens. In designing the programme, we included the following:

• HIV/AIDS Awareness
• Peer Educator Programme – Counselling and Care Giving
• TB Awareness
• Managing Employee Wellness – Absenteeism
• Incapacity Management
• Chronic Disease Management
• Food Borne Diseases – Food handlers
• Nutritional Initiative
• Treatment literacy – Adherence
• Occupational Exposure
• Universal Precautions - First Aid

The Employee Wellness and Assistance Programme is committed to maintaining the privacy and confidentiality of employees and adherence to legislation, labour law and policy is strictly observed.

Way back in April 2004, Fedics - one of three primary operating divisions in the Tsebo Outsourcing Group - became the first South African company specifically to create and offer nutritionally enhanced menus designed to boost the immune systems of people living with HIV/AIDS. All client recipes and menus have been engineered to proactively address nutritional intake, with particular attention to immunity-boosting foods. It was then - and still is - a ground-breaking approach to assisting with treatment. Menus have a red ribbon next to items that are considered nutritionally supportive of HIV treatment, allowing people to order them without having to make their status known to those around them.

While many organisations have some form of in-house HIV management program, few consider the benefit of directly addressing the nutritional intake of employees infected with HIV. It's about focusing on living with HIV, not dying of AIDS and while good nutrition won't cure HIV/AIDS, it most certainly can help maintain and improve health.


Fedics is renowned for its initiatives that support its staff and clients in both health and productivity, enabling clients to pass on good health to their consumers. We are proud of the Group's Wellness programme and will continue to innovate and meet the needs of those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS.

Alan Brand (Group Wellness Manager (HIV/AIDS)): Tsebo Outsourcing Group Fedics, Drake and Scull

Mr Brand is one of our NOSHCON speakers! Please view the final programme at: http://www.noshcon.co.za/programme.html

Death toll in Russian mine blasts hit 30

http://www.newstimes.com/news/article/12-dead-83-trapped-after-blasts-hit-Russian-mine-480019.php

NOSCAR'S

Friday night the 7th May saw the 30th time that the NOSCAR’s have been hosted by NOSA. Over 80 companies were recognised for achieving what is the highest level of excellence in managing their occupational health, safety and environmental risk.

It was fantastic to have many first time winners with notable newcomers represented by companies from Namibia and Zimbabwe. We also honoured our longest achieving company who received their 28th NOSCAR. This is a truly unbelievable achievement considering the extremely high level of compliance necessary to achieve a NOSCAR.

The evening was not only about the awards but also the entertainment. The theme for this year’s banquet was “Soccer Mania” and had a truly South African flavour, featuring local artists. If this event was anything to go by, the FIFA World Cup scheduled to begin in the next month or so, is going to be a huge success.

NOSCAR is fast becoming a social event on everyone’s calendar and the night was danced away by the award winners and NOSA staff. The next major banquet for the NOSCAR achievers is scheduled for September at NOSHCON. NOSHCON is the premier conference in occupational risk management and also Africa’s largest conference on Occupational Risk Management. With 29 international and local speakers addressing the delegates, one can be sure to leave NOSHCON enriched with both the latest information as well as relationships to assist them in the management of their systems and careers.

I hope that many of you will be able to join us at Champagne Sports Resort in the mighty Drakensberg for NOSHCON 2010.

Kind regards,
Justin Hobday

Managing Director of NOSA

USA: West Virginia Proposes New Mine-Safety Rules

Extract from the Wall Street Journal, USA

The West Virginia Board of Coal Mine Safety and Health will issue new proposed regulations intended to make the state's mines safer following the explosion this month at a Massey Energy Co. mine that killed 29 miners.

The board will propose three rules aimed The West Virginia Board of Coal Mine Safety and Health will issue new proposed regulations intended to make the state's mines safer following the explosion this month at a Massey Energy Co. mine that killed 29 miners.

The board will propose three rules aimed at improving maps, evacuations and drills related to mine fires, two rules adding requirements for mine rescue teams and a rule mandating that each mine office has a barometer to monitor air pressure changes that can affect methane concentrations inside mines. Another rule would require that methane monitors on machines be tested and calibrated every 15 days.

Methane, an explosive gas that occurs naturally in coal seams, was believed to have played a role in this month's fatal explosion.

Joel Watts, health and safety administrator for the board, said the rules will be officially proposed Thursday morning when he delivers a draft to West Virginia's secretary of state. That action will begin a 30-day public comment period, before the board will respond to those comments.

Mr. Watts declined to say if the new rules are a direct result of the April 5 accident at Massey's Upper Big Branch mine in Mont coal, W.Va., or any preliminary findings by investigators. "I cannot say one way or the other because the investigation is still ongoing," he said.

Federal mine-safety officials have said that the massive explosion at the mine was likely caused by an accumulation of methane gas and could have been made more severe by coal dust. At one point during the rescue efforts, mine rescue teams had to be withdrawn from the mine when methane levels increased as a weather front approached and barometric pressure dropped.
 
The six-member board is made up of three industry representatives and three union representatives, all appointed by the West Virginia governor. The board is charged with making sure the state's coal mining health and safety regulations are effective. The board can write new rules, or alter or eliminate others.

Meanwhile, federal mine-safety regulators said Wednesday they began an "inspection blitz" over the weekend focusing on 57 underground coal mines with a history of problems involving ventilation and methane accumulation, among other things.

More than 275 Mine Safety and Health Administration coal-mine enforcement personnel were sent to the mines, more than half of which were located in West Virginia and Kentucky, the agency said. The agency said results of the inspections would be made public as they become available.

MSHA began the review after the explosion at Massey's Upper Big Branch mine.

"The purpose of these inspections is to provide assurance that no imminent dangers, explosions, hazards or other serious health or safety conditions and practices are present at these mines," Joe Main, the head of MSHA, said in a statement. "Just last week, we pledged to the president that we will do whatever it takes to make sure another tragedy like the one that claimed 29 miners' lives at Upper Big Branch never happens again."

Of the 57 mines subject to the inspections, nine are owned by Massey. Five are owned by Consol Energy Inc. Another five are owned by Patriot Coal Corp., while three are owned by Peabody Energy Corp. and two by Alpha Natural Resources LLC. Most of the remaining mines are owned by privately held companies.
 
Editor: Mark Freeman (mark.freeman@industry.nsw.gov.au)
 

America's dark history of coal

Miners have clashed, sometimes violently, with owners. Will it be deja vu in West Virginia?

Watching the events unfold around Massey Energy Co.'s Upper Big Branch coal mine the last few weeks created an uneasy sense of deja vu. And it had less to do with 29 miners' bodies below ground than with power plays and corporate hubris above it.

The deadly West Virginia mine explosion came four days after the 100th anniversary of the start of a lengthy Colorado coal strike that eventually led to open guerrilla warfare between miners and the Colorado National Guard. The nadir of that showdown was what came to be called the Ludlow Massacre when, at the end of a daylong gun battle on April 20, 1914, National Guardsmen torched a strikers' tent colony where 11 children and four mothers were hiding in a large pit beneath the wooden floor of one of the tents. All but two of the mothers perished.

Few people these days have heard of the Ludlow Massacre. Fewer still know about the circumstances in which it occurred. In the face of abject regulatory failure, at least 75 people were killed over a seven-month period during the strike, as several thousand coal miners openly rebelled against a corrupt local political and economic system.

West Virginia has its own history of violent mining confrontations, including the 1921 march on Blair Mountain when 13,000 armed miners faced off against mine guards, local militia and government troops. Sixteen men, most of them miners, were killed before the U.S. government sent in one of its newest weapons — planes — to intimidate the miners into retreating. It worked.

But there had been no defusing the conflict in Colorado, where the mine owners — led by the Rockefellers' Colorado Fuel & Iron Co. — were so powerful that they effectively created their own laws, stole elections at will and installed mine superintendents to rule small fiefdoms enforced by hired thugs.

As if short-circuiting democracy wasn't bad enough, the coal operators ignored government safety regulations, considering them an intrusion on their right to make a profit. In the eyes of the Rockefellers' man in Colorado, Lamont Montgomery Bowers, the miners had a simple choice: Work under the operators' terms or find another job, safety be damned.

Don Blankenship, who runs Massey Energy, would have fit right in among those Colorado coal barons. Media reports have detailed Blankenship's efforts to dominate state politics, including trying to stack the state Supreme Court as it was considering cases involving Massey.

Other media reports have detailed widespread safety violations at Massey mines. In one internal memo, Blankenship warned mine managers that they were to ignore any directive "to do anything other than run coal. … This memo is necessary only because we seem not to understand that the coal pays the bills."

Bowers would have been proud.

The Colorado strike began in the northern mines on April 1, 1910. After it faltered, the United Mine Workers expanded the strike in September 1913 to southern Colorado, covering the eastern foothills of the Rockies. Most of the miners' demands were already required under Colorado law, including that they be paid for "dead work" they had been doing for free — namely, shoring up mine roofs with timbers so they wouldn't collapse and kill them.

"The companies created a condition which they considered satisfactory to themselves, and ought to be to the workmen, and jammed the workmen into it, and thought they were philanthropists," Ethelbert B. Stewart, a top investigator for the new Department of Labor, wrote at the time. "That men have rebelled grows out of the fact that they are men."

The expanded strike was a nasty, brutal affair, and after a series of attacks and murders on both sides, Gov. Elias M. Ammons sent in the National Guard as peacekeepers. At the same time, state budget problems began delaying paychecks, which led many of the Guardsmen to walk away. The hated private mine guards took their places, and the peacekeepers morphed into the miners' enemy.
Then came the deaths at Ludlow on April 20, 1914. Over the next 10 days, amid a national union "call to arms," thousands of marauding miners and their supporters went on a rampage of retribution. At least 30 people were killed as the makeshift guerrilla army seized control of 275 miles of the Colorado Front Range.

Unable to stem the insurrection, Ammons sought help from President Woodrow Wilson, who sent in the Army to supplant the National Guard. The miners, with their immediate enemy gone, laid down their arms on May 1, and the fighting was over, with the miners winning the war but losing. It would take another 13 years and the Wobblies to gain union recognition there.

Yet much of the political and economic oppression in the region ended. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, a little revolution wasn't a bad thing for the miners of Colorado. Let's hope it doesn't take the same kind of action to redress the very deep grievances in West Virginia.

Scott Martelle is the author of "Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West."

http://www.scottmartelle.com/

USA: Serious problems found at Massey mines since blast

Extract from Associated Press, USA

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Federal inspectors have found more than 60 serious safety violations at Massey Energy operations since the explosion that killed 29 miners, adding to fallout from the disaster that includes a wrongful death lawsuit by one of the men's widows.
 
Inspectors visited more than 30 underground Massey coal mines in West Virginia, Kentucky and Virginia after the April 5 blast, according to records from the Mine Safety and Health Administration. The agency has tentatively blamed preventable accumulations of explosive methane gas and coal dust for the worst U.S. coal mining disaster since 1970.

The miner's widow accuses the company of a history of safety violations that amount to negligence in the first wrongful death lawsuit over the explosion, which she filed Thursday.

Investigators were reviewing records from the site of the blast and waiting for dangerous gases to be ventilated before going underground at the Upper Big Branch mine. It will probably be another week until investigators can safely go in, MSHA Administrator Kevin Stricklin said.

To tally violations at other Massey sites, The Associated Press checked inspection records for all of the company's approximately 70 underground coal mines in the U.S. from April 5 through Thursday. Mines operated by other companies also were inspected during the same period.

Stricklin said the MSHA hasn't been disproportionately targeting Massey since the blast, nor has it increased the pace of inspections. He did say inspectors have responded to hazard complaints at two Massey mines.

"We're just going about our regular business," Stricklin said. "I didn't give any instructions to go and look at Massey mines."

Still, Stricklin sharply criticized the company for violations found in the last 10 days.

The violations include conveyor belt problems at Massey's Aracoma Alma No. 1 mine in West Virginia, where a belt fire killed two men in 2006.
 
"I'm very disappointed," Stricklin said. "You would think that personnel associated with Massey would be really more careful."

The company's Solid Energy No. 1 mine in Kentucky was cited for allowing coal dust to pile up on three occasions since the explosion.

"That's very troubling," Stricklin said. "Pitiful."

Mines are required to keep methane well below explosive levels with sophisticated ventilation systems and control coal dust by keeping it from piling up and covering it with noncombustible material.

Stricklin has told district managers to look more closely at all mine ventilation systems and the buildup of methane, and to move rock dusting surveys to the front end of the quarterly inspection.

Stricklin said he was embarrassed the industry wasn't able to prevent the Upper Big Branch tragedy.

"An explosion of this magnitude basically sends us back 40 years. All explosions are preventable," he said.

Massey is facing its first wrongful death lawsuit over the blast, filed by Marlene Griffith in Raleigh County Circuit Court. The lawsuit also targets Performance Coal, the Massey subsidiary that operated the underground mine.

The lawsuit claims Massey's handling of working conditions at the mine, plus its history of safety violations, amounted to aggravated conduct that rises above the level of ordinary negligence.

Griffith and her husband, William Griffith, were planning to celebrate their 33rd wedding anniversary April 30, the lawsuit said.

Mark Moreland, a Charleston lawyer representing Griffith, said that William Griffith was concerned about safety in the mine and had avoided serious injury during a rock fall there a week before his death.

"He told his wife on more than one occasion that if anything happened to him in that mine, that she needed to get a lawyer," Moreland said Friday.

Massey did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday on the lawsuits or the violations.

The West Virginia Office of Miners' Health, Safety and Training started its own safety sweep of the state's nearly 200 underground mines Friday. Administrator Terry Farley declined to say whether the agency is targeting Massey.

MSHA issued the recent citations while conducting spot checks and routine inspections at the Massey operations.

Agency records show the problems were not universal; several Massey mines weren't cited at all after the inspections.

Among those that came up clean is Massey's Tiller No. 1 mine in Virginia. Federal inspectors had warned Massey to improve safety at the mine last fall or face heightened enforcement for a pattern of serious violations.

President Barack Obama has ordered a sweeping review of coal mines with poor safety records and called for stronger mining laws.

Mines in West Virginia were asked to stop producing coal Friday and concentrate on safety in memory of the Upper Big Branch victims.
 
Editor: Mark Freeman (mark.freeman@industry.nsw.gov.au)