Behavioral safety and mindfulness as barriers to workplace health improvement

Evaluation of the "Safety and Health" Profession: a Critical Analysis of Major Historical and Current Events Driven by Tragedy, Technology, and Regulation

Introduction In spite of the modernization of society and the evolution and implementation of technology, we have still hit a statistical plateau in the number of fatalities in the U.S. The reason for this is actually a complex arrangement of factors that can range from too little regulatory oversight to too much emphasis on oversight. As Robb (2017) points out behavioral safety is one of the biggest issues in the Safety and Health profession today because no matter how evolved technology is or how implemented it is, human behavior always remains a risk variable. Indeed, it is because of the human factor that Congress initiated the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, which allowed for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) to be created. Nearly 50 years later, however, the U.S. is still struggling with health and safety issues—and the biggest barrier both past and present that impeded and continues to impeded improvement in the Safety and Health field is mindfulness, which is a human attribute that requires foresight, patience, awareness, and consideration (Dierynck, Leroy, Savage & Choi, 2017).

Background In the 1960s, workplace injuries were on the rise. Health and safety issues were a public concern, and indeed “disabling injuries increased 20 percent during the decade, and 14,000 workers were dying on the job each year” (Fleming, 2001, p. 23). William Steiger pointed out in Congress that “more than 400,000 Americans were killed by work-related accidents and disease, and close to 50 million more suffered disabling injuries on the job” over the course of two and a half decades in the mid-20th century (Fleming, 2001, p. 24). However, the current situation has not improved, and in some ways it has become worse. One way in which health and safety has deteriorated in the workplace is in the way in which corporations have turned a blind eye to the issue. Loomis (2015) notes that corporations bypass OSHA by outsourcing and offshoring labor to parts of the world where regulation is minimal. An egregious example is seen in the shipping industry, where ship recycling (which is expensive to do domestically because of regulations and the costs associated with skilled labor) is offshored to places like Bangladesh (Hossain, 2015). Instead of paying skilled laborers in the U.S. to deconstruct and recycle old shipping vessels, ship owners sell their ships to third parties to get around regulatory restrictions; the ships are then dismantled in unsafe working environments, causing destruction to the environment and health hazards for laborers (Hossain, 2015). Corporations lack, in other words, the mindfulness identified by Kachan et al. (2017) as essential to promoting workplace safety and a culture of health and safety in the overall field. In the light of so many companies outsourcing and offshoring to cut down on costs, Kim, Park and Park (2016) have pointed out the need for a national preventive safety and health policy framework that these companies can employ. However, without the due mindfulness on the part of companies’ leaders, CEOs and Boards of Directors, no such framework is likely to compete with the perceived monetary advantages of offshoring and outsourcing. Without a mindful approach to occupational safety, the future will continue to look grim for laborers both domestically and abroad.

Argument Friedman (1970) argued that the social responsibility of a corporation was to increase its profits—and that line of argument has served as the framework for many companies looking to bypass the oversight given to OSHA one year after Friedman made this claim. Thanks to globalization, the actual ethics of offshoring and its impact on the economy, the environment and safety and health, have not received as much attention as the fact that opportunities for increasing margins abounded. However, Tang, Hull and Rothenberg (2012) have shown that corporate social responsibility is better understood in terms of accountability to a community—which means that a company should consider those factors which are most impactful to its own community’s health and prosperity. Certainly mindfulness would play a part in promoting health and safety standards in occupations. Mindfulness of safety and health issues—i.e., of putting people before profits—would also reduce the rampant offshoring of labor to third worlds where pay, safety, and regulations are poor. Riles (2014) has shown that companies that are more mindful of profits, on the other hand, will look for ways to commit regulatory arbitrage to avoid paying the costs associated with skilled labor, regulatory oversight and health and safety commitments.

The Current State of the Safety & Health Field/Profession

Solutions In the past, the U.S. tried to address occupational safety issues by developing OSHA. However, companies went offshore to get around domestic regulations and their associated costs. Activists for corporate social responsibility and accountability as well as for human and environmental rights advocated for international guidelines to enforce the kind of laws that industrialized societies universally acknowledged as promoting of safety and health. To get around these solutions, companies have looked for regulatory arbitrage opportunities (Riles, 2014). For instance, in shipping, owners will register their ships under flags-of-convenience in order to skirt their own domestic laws and regulations. The past problems continue into the present and the solutions offered then are still the ones offered today. In short, more oversight and regulation among certain states allows other states (like Panama) to open the door to those wishing to avoid regulation altogether. Nationally speaking, OSHA has brought attention to the need for more safety, but the current Administration is determined to roll back regulations. The best solution going forward, therefore, is that identified by Kachan et al. (2017) as well as by Robb (2017): mindfulness of behavioral safety is crucial to the security and health of laborers in the future. To promote mindfulness, a culture of mindfulness must be created and this can only be created with the help of leaders at the top of organizations and support among stakeholders (Robb, 2017). I have seen this in my own organization where health and safety issues were addressed because management wanted to demonstrate a better approach to corporate social responsibility and there was enough support among stakeholders to bring the organization in to conformity with the current safety guidelines and even to go beyond current safety guidelines by incorporating extra considerations to ensure that the workplace environment was safe for a number of years going forward. As time, talent and technology continue to progress, mindfulness of putting people before profits is the number one way for companies to ensure that occupational safety is a foremost issue of concern.