Pascal Ughetto, Philippe Askenazy, and Frédéric Garcias, with Gilles Jeannot, Juliette Ducoulombier, Nicolas Klein, Anne-Sophie Maillot, and Jean Tharotte
Report for a public works group, Prevention Department, March 2019.
The research aimed to understand the mechanisms by which corporate occupational health and safety policies produce their effects in terms of accident rates and economic performance, but also encounter limitations that may, to date, remain relatively enigmatic to stakeholders. It was carried out by a multidisciplinary team (economics, ergonomics, management, and sociology) and combined a qualitative approach with quantitative analyses. The group's prevention policy has developed a number of tools that reflect its desire to organize safety: informing and raising awareness of risks, listing them in order to better avoid them, and combating risk-taking. This includes a database of near misses and various awareness-raising and incentive schemes. A network of quality, prevention, and environment (QPE) professionals is an integral part of this policy. The group's prevention policy explicitly relies on the conviction of managers at all levels, considering that without a deep-seated belief in the importance of prevention on the part of managers, a group policy would lack real leverage.
The research revealed several findings and results. As much as it is influenced by individuals, and in particular by the ability of agency managers to take ownership of this policy and demonstrate their commitment to it, the effective deployment of tools is also influenced by economic reasoning. Even with highly committed management, economic considerations can take precedence: this can be seen in the case of an emergency on a construction site or in order to obtain a contract, knowing that the client is not sensitive to prevention. In this company, as in others in the sector, the indicators and management control of the agencies and the group effectively place prevention in juxtaposition with economic considerations. Although they are informed and aware of the tools available for prevention, workers are keen to report situations where this policy seems to give way to more pressing imperatives, such as the speed of completion of a project, catching up on accumulated delays, etc. The decisive factor is that project planning integrates prevention primarily in administrative terms. The schedule, initially based on the study and invoiced costs, focuses on ensuring that the project is completed within the budget. It leaves it largely up to the construction site and its management to adjust to the actual conditions. However, the realities of construction sites are marked by the normal nature of uncertainty, recurring downtime, and emergencies. For the construction site hierarchy, which is directly involved in concrete situations where the tension between economics and prevention must be resolved, there is nothing simple about embodying and implementing prevention measures in a credible manner. QPEs also have a complicated path to find their position in the articulation between a policy whose rules are formulated in the abstract and concrete situations that challenge the compatibility between economics and prevention.
Keywords
: Occupational health and safety. Risk and accident prevention. Public works. Occupational risk management tools.