The Mistaken Unsung Hero of Productivity

The traditional way to measure productivity focuses on the input, process and output. Industry focuses on the cost optimisation during the input, lean manufacturing, KAIZEN in the process and the return of investment on the output. However, employee welfare is always labelled and perceived as cost and burden for the industry. This article aims to expose and to reveal the secrets of productivity that have always been the least priority – occupational safety and health.

When reviewing the public perception about the Department of Occupational Safety and Health (DOSH) under the Ministry of Human Resources, this department is known as the troublemakers and give issues to the industry. In the eye of the industry, this department would only come in to find fault and penalise the industry. However, those industrial people who gave such connotation, have they ever tried to understand the fundamentals and the existence of this department?

The Evolution of the Department of Occupational Safety and Health

The issue of occupational safety was first established in Malaysia in the year 1878 when Mr William Givan was appointed as the Machinery Inspector. His job was to inspect the safety aspect of steam boilers, which was usually used in tin mines. This was known as the steam boiler safety era that was before 1915.

From 1914 till 1952 was known as the machinery safety era. During this era, inspectors needed to focus on the inspection of machinery, including internal combustion engines, water turbines and other related auxiliary machinery. The officer who was involved in the inspection was known as the Inspector of Machinery and Assistant Inspector of Machinery under the administration of the Machinery Branch, Mineral Department. Moving to the industrial safety era – 1953 till 1967, the Machinery Ordinance 1953 was started to cover all aspect of factory workers’ safety where those machineries were being used. However, the ordinance was not fully enforced.

From 1970 till 1994 was known as the industrial safety and hygiene era. In 1967, the Factories and Machinery Act was enacted by the Parliament and focused on machinery and occupational safety. The development on safety and health achieved a great change with the formation of Industrial Hygiene Section in 1980; the Petroleum Safety Section in 1985; Major Hazard Section in 1991 and active engagement and involvement with the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

After 1994, it was the start of occupational safety and health era – the enactment of Occupational Safety and Health Act 1994 (Act 514) to promote self-regulation concept among the employers and employees and to establish effective safety and health measures.

Currently, under the Occupational Safety and Health Master Plan 2016-2020, strategies and programs were formulated to further boost national occupational safety and health (OSH) to greater heights in order to protect the nation’s human resources, which are an important asset to the success of Vision 2020. Excellent OSH level will improve the employee’s quality of life and thus contribute to higher productivity and index components under the Work Environment Index of Malaysia Social Welfare, in line with the policy and the country’s aim of achieving a developed country status.

Achieving International Productivity Standards: Occupational Safety and Health International Perspective

There are 17 areas of United Nation’s sustainable development goals. When zooming into area number 8 of the sustainable development goal, it looks at decent work and economic growth. In Target 8.8 of the sustainable development goal, item number 8 is to ensure that all  local and foreign workers are safe.  In the international level, the department follows Convention 155 – Occupational Safety and Health Convention of ILO. In 2012, DOSH ratified ILO Convention 187 on the promotional framework for occupational safety and health. Under the Convention, Malaysia needs to develop the national policy, national system and national programs.

National Policy states commitment from government, employers and employees to ensure workplaces are safe through systematic risk management. The national policy was approved by the Cabinet and signed by the Prime Minister on the 15^th of January 2019. National System refers to the establishment of infrastructure and framework that include OSH laws, enforcement authority, enforcement mechanism (audit, inspection, investigation, punitive action), promotional activities, national tripartite advisory council and a mechanism to collect and analyse OSH data (occupational accident and diseases). National Program relates to OSH Master Plan 2020 (together with Strategic Plan for Building, Construction Industry, as well as Strategic Plan for Small and Medium Industries). These plans clearly stated the objectives, timelines and the implementers.

The Mistaken Unsung Hero

There are two main indicators of occupational safety and health; the leading indicator and the lagging indicator. The lagging indicators include the mortality cases, occupational accidents, diseases and poisoning cases. The leading indicators include numbers of workplaces that have been inspected and audited, the number of researches conducted, a number of OSH infrastructure and practitioners created, and the number of awareness and training have been conducted. However, the public only has an interest to look at the lagging indicator – the number of accident cases!

The public should change their perception, not only looking into the number of accident cases, but the contribution and hard work of DOSH should be reviewed.

To illustrate, when the department increases the enforcement exercise, logically and automatically, the number of cases of non-compliance would be increased. However, the public would look at the department in another perspective. The public would magnify that occupational safety and health becomes a big issue as if the department is not doing its job. As such, the department is always becoming the victim when performing its duties.

However, industrial players remain focused on the inspection, but they are yet to appreciate the new focus of DOSH that looks into the employee’s quality of life and thus contribute to increasing of productivity. Hence, it is a need to understand the heart of DOSH.

The main role of DOSH is to promote the preventive culture of occupational safety and health at the workplace. By promoting the culture, the quality of life of the employees can be achieved that can boost the quality of the organisation.

In promoting occupational safety and health culture, three strategies were implemented.

1. Standards setting through drafting and development of acts, regulation, code of practice and guidelines of OSH;
2. Enforcement of the acts, regulations, code of practice and guidelines; and
3. Promotion of OSH at the workplace.

The standards are the first step to promote preventive culture. The standards setting through drafting and development of acts, regulation, code of practice and guidelines of OSH provide a benchmark of best practices to ensure the occupational safety and health of the employees achieved. Unfortunately, a small number of people view the standards, acts and guidelines are designed to make their lives difficult. This is a wrong perception. When the standards, acts and guidelines are followed, they become preventive measures of the organisation, and they ensure the organisation can perform productively!

An accident occurs when there is an unsafe act and/or an unsafe condition. If there are any elements of an unsafe act and/or unsafe condition, it is just a matter of time before an accident would happen. One of the objectives of the OSH Act is to ensure the unsafe act and the unsafe condition does not appear in the workplace.

Hence, the substandard acts and substandard conditions are addressed and regulated. The terms substandard is applied because the industry must follow all the standard requirement specified whether in acts, regulations, guidelines and standards to ensure the workplace is safe.

Enforcement of the Acts

DOSH plays a role as the enforcer of Occupational Safety and Health Act, 1994 (Act 514). To enforce the act, the department has conducted inspections, audits and investigations to ensure the industry comply with the act. Trained DOSH inspectors are guided by the Enforcement Uniformity Model (EUM), a tool that is applied to assess enforcement decisions by the severity of the offences. The power to enforce and proceed with the legal process against the offender is the responsibility of DOSH.

The officers are trained to conduct risk assessment and risk control to benchmark with the available standard. When there is a gap, a notice of improvement is given. If the gap is huge, the notice of prohibition, compound and prosecution can be taken for failure to control the risk.

Now, DOSH is focusing on the root cause of the accident – the design stage. When we can eliminate the risk at the design stage, the accident can be successfully controlled or eliminated. When the substandard practice and substandard condition could be identified, steps could be taken to prevent their existence.

The general public might not understand the needs of ratification of C187. Some industry practitioners even perceive the ratification gives them a burden when operating the business. In reality, the positive impacts from the ratification of C187, including the improvement of national OSH landscape through the empowerment of legislation and enforcement activities.

For instance, there were a total of 934,141 (83%) enforcement activities in 2018, focused on proactive prevention approach of occupational accidents and diseases.  On the other hand, 193,086 (17%) of the enforcement activities focused on a reactive approach, including accident and complaint investigations and punitive actions.

For prevention, there are such registered training providers in the area of safety and health. For instance, the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) aims to train competent persons in various fields of OSH who can serve the industry.

You might not know that 83% of DOSH activities focus on prevention measures. DOSH always promotes the principle of Hazard Identification, Risk Assessment and Risk Control (HIRARC) to the industry. Hazard refers to any means that have the potential to harm people, environment or asset. During the risk assessment, the possible events that might lead to the accident must be taken into consideration. The employer and employees must set the priority which risk should be prioritised, managed and controlled.

Under the risk hierarchy of control, it must start with elimination, followed by substitution, engineering control, administrative control and lastly is using personal protective equipment (PPE). To illustrate, when there is a high risk involved, the elimination should be done. For example, the government has decided to close down the firecrackers factory after the incident that happened in 1991. If elimination is not possible, the industry should look for substitution to replace the process/equipment/material with lesser or without risk. If substitution cannot be done, the engineering control is conducted. For example, if there is a machine that generates excessive noise, we put the machine into an enclosure that must be installed so that the noise level can be reduced. When engineering control cannot solve the issues, the administrative control is used, such as standard operating procedures and safety procedures. Never straight away go for PPE as a risk control tool, PPE can only be utilised together with a higher option in the hierarchy of control. In many cases, several categories of control measures are implemented together in order to reduce the risk to as low as reasonably practicable.

The ratification of C187 gives positive impact to the industry. For instance, there is an increase in high impact promotional activities for public awareness. In 2018, there was an increase in the number of registered OSH practitioners to 57,445. The increase in talent was supported by the higher education institutions and the training centres in Malaysia. In 2018, there were a total of 39 public and private higher education institutions that had offered OSH courses (2018), and there were 94 registered training centres that had offered courses at certification level for 16 OSH competencies. The awareness of OSH attracted active participation from 13 OSH related NGOs, and at least 30 OSH studies/research were conducted until 2018.

Behavioural Insights and Behavioural Intelligence Applied in DOSH

DOSH is focusing on promoting the quality of life. ILO has estimated that the total loss due to non-compliance of occupational safety and health could reach up to 4% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of a country.  DOSH has created an environment to form a preventive culture through behavioural insights.

Application of Nudges and Behavioural Insights

Human behaviour is difficult to predict because human beings are imperfect and often make bad choices that create a negative impact on ourselves and the community. Preventive culture in the area of occupational safety and health is the best example. The industry knows that they would suffer some monetary loss when their employees are injured. However, some employers remain adamant not to follow the act to protect their employees. Their perception is simple — their employees would not be so “lucky” to get injured at the workplace, and the cost to comply with occupational safety and health requirement is high.

Sometimes, employees would recognise their mistakes after the knowledge sharing program. However, some employers need enforcement officers to bring their mistakes to their attention through audit and enforcement. Hence, DOSH always guides them to be better in the form of mentoring to advise how to create a safe and healthy workplace.

DOSH applies paternalism in enacting policies that attempt to help individuals achieve goals that they set for themselves. The department is passionate about helping the industry to promote preventive culture. DOSH applies EAST (Easy, Attractive, Social and Timely) principle in forming the organisation strategies.

Easy

DOSH has made their information on occupational safety and health easily available. For example, between 2016 and 2018, there were 167 activities done by DOSH to promote the safety culture through television and radio. Another 230 and 2455 promotional activities in printed media and social media were held respectively.

To increase the engagement with the stakeholders, the interaction with the department can be done online through http://mykkp.dosh.gov.my/. They do not need to come to the office to ask for an inspection or to get the design approval. DOSH continues to get feedback from the stakeholders to improve the system.

Besides, DOSH has started to pay attention to risk-based enforcement to make the process of enforcement more effective. In 2019, each of the state offices was given the key performance indicator to review the statistic of the high-risk area and methods to reduce the accident incidence. The state office was given a certain degree of freedom to apply their innovative and creativity to reduce the incidence. By applying risk-based enforcement, workplaces are more conducive, and productivity could be increased because the target and segmentation of risk have been controlled.

DOSH creates interesting programs to enable registered, competent persons (CP) to promote occupational safety and health culture. Yearly, the CP need to accumulate at least 30 Continuous Education Program (CEP) points to maintain their registration. DOSH has applied innovative and creativity to kill two birds with one stone. Now, when the CP promote occupational safety and health at the workplace, they would entitle CEP point, and it can be used to renew their professional registration.

In order to promote and ensure preventive culture is successfully inculcated, DOSH has understood the dilemma of the construction industry, especially the “pain” of the main contractor. Now, the responsibility does not only limit to the contractor, the designer and owner of the project also have to take responsibility towards the HIRARC process. DOSH believes that when the design stage has been professionally done, the risk can be minimised. Hence, DOSH has published OSH Construction Industry Management Guidelines to assist the growth of the industry.

 Social

DOSH focuses on information dissemination when implementing new strategies. For example, to promote knowledge and skills of occupational safety and health, a program “60 Minutes We are OSH Leaders” was organised. The program became viral and helped industrial players to promote OSH skills and culture at the workplace. From this program, there were 18 dialogue sessions conducted with the employees (592 participants); 43 discussions with the industry association (2258 participants) and a total of 172 programs that involved the senior and top management.

All the DOSH promotional programs applied the butterfly effect through social media. For example, for the program of OSH for University Student (OSH4U) and OSH for Technical dan Vocational Student (OSH@TVET), there were 218 seminars that benefited 33,323 participants; 77 exhibitions, 142 dialogues that involved 8,457 participants. Similarly, for Managing OSH through Vendor & Entrepreneurs (MOVE) programs, these were a total of 24 dialogues at the state level that involved 159 companies. From these programs, there were a total of 717 vendors that were involved in the program.

Timely

DOSH has a high commitment in promoting the culture of prevention at the workplace. World OSH Day is celebrated each year on the 28th April, and the second week of July is declared as the National OSH Week. DOSH has been organising various programs to create safety and health awareness to the public. During the national policy campaign, within 28 days, the department had received a total of 115,951 signatures from the stakeholders to the support of the national policy on occupational safety and health, and had been recognized by the “Malaysia Book of Records”.

Conclusion

Occupational health and safety is the key to productivity and not a burden to the industry. The DOSH is committed to providing the best service by serving the nation with heart and soul. However, the commitment of the industry is needed to develop the industry that strive for a safe and healthy workplace. The department would continue to apply behavioural insights and behavioural intelligence to ensure the engagement of the industry and growth to create a sustainable, safe and healthy workplace.

By,

Ir. Haji Omar Bin Mat Piah