Bosses Should Award Workers Reporting Risks

Employers offering annual ‘Most Courageous’ and ‘Most Useful’ awards to staff who take the initiative in reporting workplace hazards could be a valuable tool for securing safer workplaces, according to a leading organisational researcher.

Australian National University Associate Sociology Professor Dr Andrew Hopkins says many workplaces currently have mechanisms that discourage reporting and work on the assumption that work systems are already safe.

"Warning signs are always ambiguous and easily missed in an atmosphere of complacency created by the assumption that an organisation is safe," he says.

However, "it would be far better to start with the assumption that the system is unsafe until proven otherwise," Dr Hopkins says.

Employers who are serious about workplace safety need mechanisms that encourage people to report the full range of potential risks, including leaks and "even just their sense that something is wrong".

Dr Hopkins says before every disaster there are "always warning signs that are ignored because our systems and people are not set up to focus on them".

Dr Hopkins was an expert witness at the Royal Commission into the Esso Longford explosion in 1998 and has written two books on the issue.

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