Checking Off the Box

Flawed attention to compliance stands in the way of improvement

In business as in education, compliance doesn't necessarily mean understanding
Credit: Matt Miller

Wed, 04/26/2017 - 12:03

Complying to requirements and standards is sufficient to meet the objectives of injury and accident prevention, and ensure the health and safety of all employees—right?

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In his article, “We’re blinded by compliance bias,” health and safety consultant Dan Markiewicz says no, citing data indicating that only 19 percent of occupational deaths are due to injury. The rest? Diseases such as circulatory impairment and cancer, which have nothing to do with OHSA or other standards to which an organization complies. Keeping employees safe with workplace standards is not sufficient to keep them healthy.

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Comments

Kodak's world class photographic film became obsolete while complying with ISO 9001:2000, so this is an excellent point.

This topic came up at the ISO World Conference, along with the phrase "performance based audits" (or results-based audits). The truth is that compliance and results should be synergistic. If compliance with the standard, such as ISO 9001:2015, does not deliver the desired results, closed loop improvement processes should modify the (auditable) processes so they do deliver the desired results. Then compliance with the process will deliver the intended performance, and also prevent backsliding to the previous inferior methods.

This concept actually dates back to Frederick Winslow Tayor's Scientific Management. Everybody complies with the standard for the job. If an improvement is made, the standard is changed accordingly so compliance delivers the superior results.

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