Royal Mail Letters Accident Investigation Policy

[TrueBlueTerrier]

No. 328/09
Ref A2
Date: 16 April 2009

To: All Postal Branches

Dear Colleagues,

Royal Mail Letters Accident Investigation Policy - Accident On Duty "Blameworthy Warning Letters" & Accident Disciplines:

Over the past year a number of ASRs have raised with the Health, Safety & Environment department cases where Area Management Teams in Royal Mail Letters have introduced various locally organised systems of issuing "Blameworthy Warning Letters" of various kinds or taking Safety Discipline Cases against members.

The issue has been raised with Royal Mail Letters on several occasions over the past year as well as being discussed with Royal Mail Group and the HSE. Despite general agreement that such draconian regimes have no national status and are not in line with official Royal Mail policy they appear to be continuing in certain areas. Following a recent disagreement at Cardiff Mail Centre a letter has been sent to the Royal Mail Letters Safety Director Norman Smith which is reproduced below for your information and is self explanatory.

The Health, Safety and Environment Department would like to hear from ASRs and Regional Health and Safety Forums as to what is the state of play across the UK and which areas are adopting the use of Accident On Duty "Blameworthy Warning Letters" and Accident Disciplines etc.

Yours Sincerely
 

 
Dave Joyce
National Health, Safety & Environment Officer

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“Our Ref: A2/DJ/km
 
15 April 2009
 
 
Norman Smith Safety Director
Royal Mail Letters HQ
First Floor, Royal Mail Centre. 35-50 Rathbone Place, London. W1T 1HQ
 
 
Dear Norman,

RML Accident Investigation Policy - Accident On Duty "Blameworthy Warning Letters" - Cardiff Mail Centre & Others:

We have discussed the above subject on several occasions both privately and publicly and I'm pleased to say that we have been in total agreement about the way forward and correct approach. An approach also shared by Royal Mail Group Head of Safety Keith Scott and Mark Dawson HSE Head of Utilities, when I took the opportunity to raise the matter with Keith and Mark also, in order to ensure that the two most senior Safety Directors in Royal Mail as well as the HSE's most senior Officer in respect of Royal Mail were in accord with my thoughts on this matter. 

I raised this matter publicly, in my presentations and key note speeches at both last years Royal Mail Letters National Safety events and at the Royal Mail Network/Distribution National Safety Event. On each occasion both you (Ninian Wilson before you) and Mark concurred and indeed no one opposed what I said. We agreed that a "blame-free" joint approach based on the HSE's new "Worker Involvement" model with Managers and Union Safety Reps working together to investigate accidents and near misses, getting to the root causes was the approach we supported and which is key to delivering long term safety standard improvements in Royal Mail.  We agreed that we wanted an open and transparent system which encourages workers to report everything of relevance without fear or favour, without barriers or impediments in order that we can ensure we get the clearest possible picture of the problems which need tackling even if initially incident reports increased.

To recap on what I have brought to your attention on several occasions; Over the last year we have seen a significant number of Area Managers and their teams adopt a "blame culture" in complete contradiction to the approach we favour and agree is correct.  There is too much of a tendency for managers to look to blame workers and to call for "something to be done" whenever there is an accident or an incident without taking a good hard look at themselves and without thoroughly investigating the accident in consultation with the Safety Representative to discover the real root causes and then putting things right to stop it happening again.  Adopting a 'blame culture' and issuing workers with Accident On Duty “Blameworthy Warning Letters” or instructing staff who have reported an accident to attend a Conduct Code disciplinary interviews with a senior manager and being warned of possible disciplinary action being taken against them is flawed logic and based on the incorrect notion that by threatening and bullying a worker he or she will stop having accidents – the fact is they won’t – they’ll simply stop reporting them and the safety problems remains uncorrected. The business then ends up with more serious accidents when what is really needed in many cases is better safety management and organisation. It’s a fundamental question of motivation - no one ever did or does health and safety (or anything else for that matter) in a proper and sustainable way simply because they are told to or threatened or because they fear being caught out if they don't. To do anything properly and well it needs embedding into the culture and requires that the workforce all believe it is the right thing to do. The experts in health and safety provide the framework for workers to do the right thing in the business in a way that people know will be safe and will work because it's been thought about, it's been discussed fully and managers and safety reps and agreed it together and are all committed to it and jointly monitor it.

We also agreed that we wanted to introduce into Royal Mail an Accident Investigation model based on the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) guidance on how to investigate accidents and incidents, including near misses,  HSG245 entitled 'Investigating accidents and incidents - a workbook for employers, unions, safety representatives and safety professionals'.

The guidance, which was prepared in consultation with industry, unions and health and safety professional bodies, is intended as a first step in introducing organisations to the benefits of carrying out investigations and the methods by which accidents should be recorded, investigated and the findings acted upon.

No previous expertise is needed to use the HSG245 workbook and guidance notes take the user step-by-step through the investigating process from start to finish and includes worked examples and blank template forms for accident analysis.
The four steps featured in the guidance are:

the gathering of information;
the analysing of information;
identifying risk control measures;
and the action plan and its implementation.

To have one accident is bad enough, but to feel threatened and bullied over it and then possibly have a further accident because lessons were not learnt is inexcusable. HSE and the CWU believes that the best people to make workplaces safer are the staff, safety reps and managers who work in them, working together in a 'blame-free' culture.  The HSE guidance provides a tool to find out what went wrong, learn lessons and take action to reduce, or hopefully prevent, accidents in the future.

I do not deny that in rare cases, if an individual has received suitable and sufficient Information, Instruction, Training and Supervision and where Safety Management is appropriately managed within the terms of HSE's HSG65 (Successful health and safety management.) - should that person deliberately, recklessly disregard health and safety to such an extent he or she endangers himself/herself and others to serious risk of injury then the Conduct Code may be appropriate as a last resort but in reality rarely do people set out to harm and injure themselves or others. In most cases accidents occur because of poor safety management, poor organisation of safety, a lack of Information, Instruction, Training and Supervision, poor work methods, lack of equipment and various productivity pressures creating a stressful, poor safety culture.

The over-zealous approach adopted in Cardiff (said to be part of the World Class Mails Initiative – however, I have investigated and found it's not happening in other World Class Mails trial Offices) has our people up in arms and is said to be having a detrimental effect in as much as staff are becoming guarded and less co-operative about accident, incident reporting let alone near-misses for fear of facing possible disciplinary action.  The AGM for the CF Postcode Area who has ignored the messages sent out jointly at the RML National Safety Events is already boasting of  significant accident reductions! (not surprising perhaps).  The AGM has also stated to our local Area Safety Representative that the current oppressive accident management scheme will stay in place pending a review by the new Regional Management. I do not think this is what you or I want and perhaps you can arrange for the AGM to correct it without delay and could I ask that you take action to cease similar approaches across the UK until we communicate out the way we want Regions to conduct Accident Investigation and involvement.   

Thankfully, it appears that it is the minority of Areas that have adopted this approach and a couple of AGMs did back off following the RML National Safety Events. However, we have received reports of Accident Blameworthy Letters and/or Interviews taking place in Brighton, Peterborough, Ipswich, Romford, Maidstone for example. I am investigating by way of a communication to all ASR to gauge the extent of these practices across the UK.    

I look forward to your urgent attention to this matter and look forward to hearing from you.

Yours Sincerely
 
Dave Joyce
National Health, Safety & Environment Officer”

[brothermagrew]

IMHO a TOP LETTER from a TOP MAN

Dave Joyce one of the CWU's finest National Officer's

And more importantly he is RIGHT on the button on this issue.

[mitzi]

so what was the response from Royal Mail?.
Have these practices been stopped?