Fig 2 - uploaded by Paul Lindhout
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Companies often use a substantial quantity of safety-related documents such as the front gate safety flyer, emergency evacuation instructions, work permits, safety procedures, work instructions and policy statements. In many cases the personnel magazines and message board notes also contain safety information. The authors and readers may not be in...
Contexts in source publication
Context 1
... results are shown in Fig. 2. The more to the left a document is plotted, the more easily it can be read. It would appear that authors of personnel magazines are focussed on readability since all their documents meet the readability criterion I, they all have levels A2 and below. It seems common practice to write policy doc- uments in levels B1 and up. These ...
Context 2
... B1 and up. These documents reflect -tentatively - that both authors and readers would be highly educated staff only. The front gate safety flyers, tank truck loading procedures and work instructions show a wide spread of readability levels, indicat- ing that readability is not a well-controlled document property, regardless of the criterion used. Fig. 2 illustrates also that readability differs for different types of safety-related documents in the ''high risk" companies investi- gated. The policy documents are all at a high level (on the right hand side below C1 and C2), the personnel magazines are all at a low language complexity level (on the left hand side below A1 and A2). This ...
Context 3
... the KPI is designed for safety documents only, criterion I is used to define the KPI performance/non-performance limit. The three criteria levels I, II and III are shown in Fig. 2 as vertical lines. The lower horizontal scale indicates the percentage of the Dutch adult population able to read documents in each of the CEFR levels A1 and A2, etc., indicated on top. For comparison, the readability levels for every day documents A, B and C: a free newspaper, a high school book and a government letter, serve as ...
Context 4
... The implementation time of the readability risk con- trolsystem in a company with 100 safety-related documents can be estimated as follows. As a starting ''boundary" condition prior to the introduction the readability is assumed to be distributed as shown in Fig. 2. So about half of the 100 documents are not sufficiently readable. The implementation is given project status and an internal ''R-team" consisting of five key document authors is trained for one and a half day. An external audit is arranged approximately halfway the implementation to verify whether the project is still in its tracks. ...
Citations
... When texts are written in a very complex manner, certain target audiences may have difficulty understanding the message. The readability of safety documents is studied in the chemical industry, for instance by Lindhout, Kingston-Howlett, and Ale (2010) for Seveso companies. Park et al. (2018) highlight the importance of easy readability in designing safe operating procedures. ...
Maritime accident reporting is performed as a means for experience feedback within and across organizations. While the quality and representativeness of the findings are critical to prevent similar accidents from occurring in the future, various contextual factors concerning the reports can affect the ability of various actors to use these effectively as a basis for learning and action. Research suggests that the readability of safety documents is essential to their successful adoption and use. However, there is currently no empirical knowledge about the readability of maritime accident reports. Consequently, this study presents a comparative analysis of quantitative readability metrics of maritime accident reports. Three-year data extracted from reports by five English-language national accident investigation authorities, and one industry reporting system are used. The results show that the language used is commonly at the post-secondary reading level. Reports by the Nautical Institute’s Mariners’ Alerting and Reporting Scheme are written at a high school level and thus easier to read. Statistical variation of readability of reports by different organizations is significant. Implications for future research and practice are discussed. The main recommendation for reporting organizations is to be mindful of language complexity and simplify where possible.
... Globalization has additionally been related along a basic change in industrialized nations towards moderately protected (as far as occupational damage) administration segments and away from the more unsafe segments, for example, farming, logging, and mining [87]. Perilous ventures have progressively been moved to creating nations where there have been fewer assets to secure specialists [88] or where, now and again, for example, 'send out preparing zones'; businesses might be absolved from work enactment [89]. ...
Nowadays occupational health & safety have become very essential in the areas of human or organizational behavior. It is concerned with observations related to the environmental conditions of employees’ workplace, such as maintenance & promotion of higher needs like employee's mental well-being, social & physical conditions of employee’s workplace by every department. Occupational health & safety has become a major concern around the globe that is leading to a paradigm shift. The area of occupational health and safety is basically concerned with the protection of people’s health and safety within the work environment according to the work that is assigned to them. This research presents criticisms, observations, and functions of individual sources and combination of sources that form the literature on occupational health and safety. More so, the paper focuses on reviewing empirical works that have been done in the area of occupational health and safety so as to provide insight on the recent trends and techniques associated with the management of occupational health and safety. To achieve this, several previous studies on the topic have been reviewed.
... Despite their great importance, however, documents are not always written clearly [7,8,12]. This can prove particularly negative when they are informative, as all workers, especially vulnerable groups such as temporary or foreign workers, are exposed to the risk. ...
... The results show that by developing graphic and visual documentation and providing training to operatives of the measures described in that documentation, a major improvement has been attained in the performance of the OH&S management system. This demonstrates what other authors have already noted [2,4,7,10], when they point out the fundamental role of documentation and training in managing worker safety. ...
In recent literature, health and safety at work has been gaining importance, both by legal and ethical points of view. In this presented case study, the focus is on improving knowledge and skills of employees to successfully identify and avoid H&S hazards in their work environment. In order to achieve the proposed objective, an action research methodology is used. Following this approach, audiovisual documentation is created with the aim of carrying out training sessions for employees. The results obtained in this paper contribute to the knowledge in the area of occupational health and safety management, paving the way for further research on these topics.
... Here language can become a problem and a hazard (Starren et al., 2009). Migrant workers without full command of the native language are simply put to work without clear instructions and/or are given rules, and protocols they cannot understand (Corvalan et al., 1994;Döös et al., 1994;Lindhout et al., 2010;Lindhout, 2010;Hovden et al., 2010;Swuste and Jongen, 2013). ...
... Staff turnover will tend to whittle away implicit knowledge. One strategy here is to make conducive conditions subject to KPIs, we have argued the case for this elsewhere in respect of readability (Lindhout et al. 2009). As discussed in Lindhout and Kingston-Howlett (2011), the demands of text (such as procedures) must be matched to the reading ability of the people who use them. ...
... Risks that have been identified and accepted correctly are called assumed risks (Kingston et al., 2009). These might be risks to safety, to profitability, and to the goals of the operation itself. ...
‘Operational Readiness’ is a term coined in the 1950s to describe the developmental state of weapons systems. However, by 1980, the phrase had taken on a wider meaning, close to ‘system safety’. Operational readiness was a means to encapsulate the practices of safe design and to integrate them into corporate decision-making.
Documentation of the work done on operational readiness between 1970 and 1990 is not plentiful or widely published. The theoretical foundation of operational readiness was only partly described. Now, in the process safety field, operational readiness exists only in a limited way; chiefly as a protocol for restarting processes after shutdowns.
A large European airline has adopted the operational readiness concept as a means to manage change in their systems and processes. Aviation is a highly competitive market. Increasingly, commercial viability depends on operational innovation. It is equally critical to sustain high levels of safety. These are assumed by passengers and demanded by regulators. In 2012, the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) introduced new regulations. These have spurred aviation companies to find new ways to manage safety. The airline is using operational readiness to:
• integrate the consideration of safety into decision-making throughout the life-cycle of operations;
• identify operational requirements with greater certainty and efficiency;
• avoid the need for rework and retrofit of solutions; and, to
• document the basis for decisions about design and implementation.
The airline is using the operational readiness concept as a basis for its management of change procedures. In parallel to developing the procedures, the authors took the opportunity to locate the concept of operational readiness in published literature. This was done in three steps. First, based on the original published (and unpublished) work, a generic management of change process was flow-charted. Next, the generic process was analysed to make explicit the two hundred or so criteria that the process should satisfy. Lastly, the list of criteria was examined to identify underlying principles, which were subject to further refinement and literature research. This produced twelve general principles.
Engineers will recognise several of the operational readiness principles as those of design. However, many of the stakeholders involved in creating and modifying operational systems are not engineers. The airline project aimed to create a management of change process in which the stakeholders co-operate and share knowledge efficiently. This reduces uncertainty in the design process and allows risks to be recognised early with the greatest opportunity for the most safety at least cost.
The time may be ripe for the process industries to rediscover the operational readiness concept. At one end of the lifecycle, businesses are keen to embrace key enabling/emerging technologies (KETs). Towards the other end of the lifecycle, businesses are often looking for ways to safely extend plant life. This paper will argue that the operational readiness philosophy may be a source of strategies for both.
... 2.4. The continuous improvement of OSH (to be considered in Hypothesis 1) Lindhout et al. (2010) claimed prevention measures have made it possible to avoid major accidents. The successive reductions of incident rates in the process industry over the last decades were first achieved through technical means. ...
... Subsequently safety management systems achieved more improvements. Today, the current incident rate reductions revolve around safety culture (Lindhout et al., 2010). Vierendeels et al. (2011) indicated that more profound insights into the societal debate following a major accident may help private companies to adapt their safety management system and their prevention policies, and may aid the legislator to develop more efficient and effective regulations. ...
... The present study supports the results of other investigators (e.g. Kapp, 2012;Hale et al., 1997;Lindhout et al., 2010) about the importance of the training. Kapp (2012) stated that safety-related behavior should include a range of activities performed by individuals to maintain a safe workplace and it involves the actions of individuals ensuring that they comply with established safety rules and procedures as well as taking into account worker behavior. ...
... The issue of illiteracy is a widely acknowledged socio-economic problem, both among indigenous citizens and among immigrants (Bonnel 2008;Stichting and Stichting 2012). Solutions to the readability problem have found their way into everyday life since the 1920s in written media and are currently progressing into instructions and documents in the industry and health care safety realms (EC 2001;Lindhout et al. 2010;Zamanian et al. 2012). ...
... As a start the readability of safety documentation should be adapted to the existing levels of literacy among new foreign workers and indigenous workers (Lindhout et al. 2010;Lindhout and Kingston-Howlett 2011). ...
The rich diversity in culture and languages in the European Union is embraced. Surely multilingualism is also being promoted for economic reasons. However, only scant attention is paid to the downside of multilingual work settings. Production losses and accidents, related to language issues, appear to be ignored as a common problem requiring risk control. Simply expecting all workers to learn the local language is not feasible. Other ways are needed to avoid economic damage and personal injury. This study identifies the dangers of multilingual work settings and assesses the risks. Activities aiming to control risks are investigated and an inventory of existing best practice in industry and health care is made. Five main ways to control these risks are highlighted. They are: provision of guidance, use of a lingua franca, the reduction of illiteracy, implementing controlled readability and finally the introduction of a range of practical measures. In order to proceed with these risk controls, seven unresolved dilemmas require language-related policy in the EU to be further developed.
A significant part of literature has shown that the adoption of Sustainability and Health-Safety management systems from organizations bears some substantial benefits since such systems (i) create a suitable frame for the sustainable development, implementation and review of the plans and/or processes, necessary to manage occupational health-safety (OHS) in their workplaces and (ii) imply innovative thinking and practices in fields of economics, policy-making, legislation, health and education. To this context, the paper targets at analysing current sustainability and OHSMSs in order to make these issues more comprehend, clear and functional for scholars and practitioners. Therefore, a literature survey has been conducted to map the territory by focusing on two interrelated tasks. The first one includes the presentation of the main International Management Systems (IMS) with focus on Sustainability and OHS (S_OHSMS) topics and the second task depicts a statistical analysis of the literature-review findings (for the years 2006–2017). In particular, the main purposes of the literature research were: (i) the description of key points of OHSMS and sustainability standards, (ii) the comparative analysis of their characteristics, taking into account several settled evaluation-criteria and (iii) the statistical analysis of the survey’s findings, while our study’s primary aim is the reinforcement of OHMSs’ application in any organization. The results evince, that the field of industry (with 28%) and also of the constructions (with 16%), concentrate the highest percentage of OHSMS use. In general, there were only few publications including OHSMSs (referred to various occupational fields) available in the scientific literature (during 2006–2017) but on the other hand, there was a gradually increasing scientific interest for these standards (especially during 2009–2012).
Since the introduction of the Diagnosis-related Group / SwissDRG, there has been a greatly increasing need for an improved data base and meaningful key figures [KPIs] for better steering and comparability in the non-medical support area [FM]. The aim was not only to compile a comprehensive compilation of KPIs in all facility management areas in the health care sector [FM in HC], but also to show connections between the required parameters. A comprehensive listing was made on the basis of existing FM and hospital key figure literature. In cooperation with four hospital partners and three business partners, the consortium research approach involved prioritizing and categorizing key figures in numerous expert rounds and interviews. The result is a catalogue of key figures which systematically lists KPIs suitable for FM in HC for each discipline, consolidates prioritised key figures and specifies them further for implementation. Thus, all the managers of FM in HC have the basis for their utililzation in practice. In doing so, they can access and discuss objective data in strategic discussions and decisions. The clear definition also makes it possible to compare with other hospitals in the future and thus to carry out benchmarking. The code catalogue KenkaS including the key figure model KenmoS is part of the reference model for non-medical support services in Hospitals RemoS and the basis for the guidance on the use of SAP for Facility Management in Healthcare LesapS together with the process model PromoS and the application catalogue ApplikaS and the assessment, simulation and benchmarking tool for facility management in health care. All topics mentioned are documented separately in detail and can be called up and downloaded with reference to the other documents at https://www.zhaw.ch/storage/lsfm/institute-zentren/ifm/healthcare/remos-documentation.pdf.
