Digging Deeper: The markers of high performance in mining occupational health and safety

摘要

Digging Deeper is the largest single study of occupational health and safety (OHS) management in the mining industry ever undertaken in Australia and has provided an accurate and reliable picture of what's actually happening in OHS in the mining industry in one state of Australia, New South Wales (NSW). The team which conducted the project was awarded the 2008 IEA/Liberty Mutual Medal for their work. The comprehensive data about mining OHS collected through Digging Deeper allowed us to identify proactive, transitional and reactive sites, providing clear evidence about the differentiators of excellent and poor OHS performance in Australia's mining industry. Proactive sites consistently exhibited greater mindfulness, workgroup cohesion, trust in management, organisational justice, supervisor support, and role clarity. These differentiators provide guidance to strategies that may support improved OHS performance in the mining industry and reveal an underlying theme: the need to get the basics of OHS management right. Proactive sites demonstrated greater capacity to deliver on the foundations such as sound risk control, effective consultation and active OHS management systems. We identified a set of 10 Platinum Rules to codify the fundamental steps the mining industry should take to more effectively manage OHS and to achieve the goal of world class OHS.