Promotional incentives

Mining company Anglo American, which had 40 worker fatalities in 2007, has warned managers in its South African operation that they will not be promoted if the company's safety record doesn't improve, see here. The group's chairman announced the move at the April AGM. We've written a lot in HSW about incentives for employees to reduce accident records and even a few management bonuses tied to safety performance, but this looks like a very clear way to focus managers' minds.

Short of a Darwin

I can't approve of the Darwin awards (so called because they are supposed to recognise a version of natural selection where people killed because of their own foolish actions remove themselves from the gene pool), because accidental death is just not funny even if the circumstances are potentially comic..

But one of the incidents shortlisted in this year's awards involved no fatality so I'm going to risk recounting it:

Kerry Bingham had been drinking with several friends when one of them said they knew a person who had bungee-jumped from a local river bridge. The conversation grew more heated and at least 10 men trooped along the walkway of the bridge at 4:30 AM. Upon arrival at the midpoint of the bridge they discovered that no one had brought a bungee rope. Bingham, who had continued drinking, volunteered and pointed out that a coil of lineman's cable, lay nearby. They secured one end around Bingham's leg and then tied the other to the bridge. His fall lasted 40 feet before the cable tightened and tore his foot off at the ankle.. He miraculously survived his fall into the icy water and was rescued by two nearby fishermen. Bingham's foot was never located.

Other foolish acts short of a grisly end are recounted here

Children and risk

I was at the House of Lords yesterday for the IOSH honorary vice presidents' lunch (apostrophe after the s because there's more than one honorary VP and in fact two new ones were appointed at the lunch: HSE chair Judith Hackitt and the tory peer Lord Brougham and Vaux).

Judith Hackitt gave a speech saying she really wants to draw attention to the worrying signs that there's a generation growing up who will be prevented from going on school trips because they are perceived as dangerous. She was talking about a Channel 4 Cutting Edge programme a couple of weeks back: Cotton Wool Kids, which featured parents explaining why they never let their children out to play with friends and followed one mother driving round town with her young daughter pointing out passers by who looked like kidnappers.

Hackitt says she's woried there'll be a whole load of people entering the workforce who are either "risk naive or risk paranoid".

I half agree and I'll post some thoughts on the other half another time.

On a purely trivial note, the Houses of Parliament are breathtaking, the most impressive of Victorian gothic bling you'll find anywhere in the UK, all intricately carved woodwork and stone and handblocked allpaper. But the tented area on the terrace beside the Thames, where they hold visitors lunches like the IOSH one, is a far cry. It was church-hall chairs and Argos chandeliers and the walls looked like curtain netting. Food was good though.