Quality and Health and Safety may not always be two sides of the same coin

Quality and Health and Safety may not always be two sides of the same coin – a lesson from the service sector for managers and enforcers

Volume:2002
Issue:1
Year: 2
Kevin Maguire1
1Division of Environmental Health and Safety, The Nottingham Trent University.
Correspondence: K Maguire, The Nottingham Trent University, Burton Street, Nottingham, NG1 4BU, UK. Telephone +44 (0)115 848 2603

Abstract

This paper examines the common assumption that quality objectives in an organisation are consistent with good health and safety practice. It begins by discussing the idea itself and its theoretical limitations before examining its genesis. It then looks at the history of quality and the language of quality within a wider management context. This is followed by a discussion of the viability of a current commentary on quality and health and safety. Having anchored the paper in the context of the service industry, the paper goes on to describe an aspect of an empirical study based in catering. The study consisted of a series of observations, a programme of physical environmental monitoring, interviews of 11 lecturer chefs, second interviews, and finally a feedback session. This helped to throw light on how quality and health and safety fit into the less predictable environment of service industries. The main finding is that as service time approaches, the importance of quality ascends while health and safety issues are relegated. Using this finding, a potential contradiction between quality management and risk management is identified. The findings are discussed in the context of possible solutions which derive from both pragmatic and theoretical perspectives. These are based on ideas generated in the coal industry regarding the separation of production and safety duties and the ideas suggested from the application of contingency theory. The paper advocates, among other things, the  acceptance of the implications of working in an organic as opposed to a mechanistic industry and its implications for training, especially of kitchen workers. Such training should be sufficient to help them to know not only what to do, but also to help them to make independent (and safe) decisions in the kitchen environment.
Key Words: Catering, environmental health, health and safety, management, quality, service industries

Introduction

In managing health and safety, especially over the last fifteen years, there has been a desire to sell safety to organisations by attaching it to other outcomes desirable to the organisation. Health and Safety, like other issues, has been active, not only in reinventing itself in current language and trends, but also in seeking to subsume itself within a category which, in consequence, attaches itself to those desirable outcomes.
The most obvious example of the above, over the years, has been the trend to demonstrate the contribution that health and safety initiatives can make to the ‘bottom line’ (to the profitability) of the organisation by reducing costs (HSE 1997, Willson 1985). The language has paralleled that of management theory with ‘efficiency’ giving way to ‘effectiveness’ giving way to ‘loss management’ giving way to ‘risk management’. Lately the desire to be ‘green’ and environmentally friendly has made its mark on health and safety, as has the jargon of ‘quality’ and of ‘integrated management systems’. While no one could argue with the view that health and safety is a management issue, it tends to sell itself by attachment to ‘management’ within the status aspect of the post ‘manager’. This approach relies on a concept of management which is related by Braverman (1974) in his description of Taylor‘s concept of scientific management, i.e. it is not part of the worker’s job, but rather it is the province of a separate stratum of ‘managers’. This is as opposed to management being an abstract process that runs through every operation and is contributed to by all levels of worker in an organisation.
Seeing other management objectives as being compatible with Health and Safety is most neatly encapsulated by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) when they wrote “Quality and Health and Safety are two sides of the same coin” (Health and Safety Executive 1992:12). This paper argues that there are limits to the usefulness of such language and that it can become self-defeating and even straightforwardly wrong.

Cost Effectiveness and Health and Safety

It has been argued that good health and safety can save money for an organisation (HSE, 1997). The message that an organisation should promote safe and healthy behaviour among its workers because it saves money carries the implicit corollary, however, that as soon as it ceases to show a return (or even a reasonable return) the effort should stop. Willson’s (1985) discussion of Magneti Marelli in Inter-war Italy gives an example of a company actually admitting this when their health and safety policy was said, at first, to operate “simply as a question of benevolence of the employers” (page 252 Willson 1985). The emphasis soon changed and the policy was said to be self-financing, the factory doctor suggesting that the occupational health effort was kept “in proportion to the increased profit yielded, otherwise it would be uneconomic” (Corregiaria in Willson 1985:253).

Quality and Health and Safety

While quality may be a stepping-stone on the journey to profitability in the current orthodoxy, it is worth considering separately because of the emphasis that is currently placed on it and also because the ‘quality process’ has become a template for much management activity.
The suggestion of a link between quality and health and safety has been around for some time, but one of the earliest promoters was Cooper (1992) who suggested that good quality emerges from good health and safety practice. Since then a series of British Standards has been embraced by many UK companies as the way to manage and to achieve, among other things, good standards of health and safety. They tend to advocate a prescriptive route. Thus BS8800:1996 (British Standards Institute 1996a), for example, tells us that a safety management system should follow the route of HS(G)65 (HSE1997) or else that of BS EN ISO 140001:1996 (British Standards Institute 1996b). Both describe pathways to be taken in order to manage safety which involve analysis of flow, identification of problem areas and the development and implementation of strategies to address them.
Behind the idea of linking quality and health and safety is a history of application of systems’ theory to the workplace, an early example being the work of the Tavistock Institute’s model of socio-technical systems and used at least as early as 1951 (see Trist et al 1963). A development of the system as an analytical tool was the management control system which, in turn, is a form of feedback system usually compared  to a refrigerator thermostat: the target (desired temperature) is set, the outcome (actual temperature) is monitored and compared constantly, and feedback results in an adjustment (the motor is operated accordingly).
Ever since its application, a system’s approach has been a very powerful analytical tool used by organisations on many facets of their operation, including protecting the health and safety of employees (see for example Ragan and Carder 1994). Its characteristics and its universality of application can explain the attraction of wishing to integrate the analyses into one great system with the hope of optimising outcomes on all fronts.
The quality process as described by various bodies including the European Centre for Total Quality Management (Osborne and Zairi 1997) is a variant of the Management Control System (MCS) model; thus standards are set, systems are put in place, and outcomes are monitored and compared to the standards, etc. with adjustments being made where there are differences between outputs and standards. Their examination of the HSE model (HSE 1992) brought out the similarities between it and their own model of Total Quality Management (TQM); they saw the HSE model as “a model for TQM” (Osborne and Zairi 1997:5). In this way we can see two types of link that can be made between systems intended to promote health and safety and TQMs. The first is to redefine the MCS model as a TQM model. Thus might one say that any systematic approach (which goes through the process of defining standards, monitoring, comparing, etc.) to health and safety is the application of a TQM approach. To be concerned about this is merely to argue about which is the correct label and definition of a process: the principles, however, are clear and laudable. The second link is to see the systems as compatible and mutual, i.e. that they can form part of the same system where quality and health and safety neither compete nor sub-optimise each other. This latter view is the “ideal” for Osborne and Zairi (1997) and is one promoted by many writers including Lischeid who saw a “natural fit between safety and quality” with safety being “just one of the many facets that must be addressed when a company embraces total quality management” (Lischeid 1994). Again no one could argue with such an aspiration if the outcome is a safe and healthy workforce.
The belief that the quality approach will also promote health and safety rests on the assumption that an organisation can plan its production i.e. that from the outset the stages and steps are all totally predictable and that there is full control over each of them. Lord Robens (Great Britain, 1972) wrote with such planned production in mind (and with the factory as its archetype). The assumption that all work in the UK followed this mode of production with a linear advance to completion enabled the systems analysts of the day to map out the production flow. Efficiency, quality, and health and safety (and environment, etc.) could then be considered along the flow-line permitting interventions to be made with the intention of improving the situation.
The simplest example would be that of the factory line where each input and its amount is known relative to the production process and the output. Thus for a desired final output, the actual amounts of each input can be fixed and the rate at which they feed into the process can be derived. This can then be used as the basis for a number of ‘risk assessment’ techniques such as HAZOP (Knieff et al, 1991).
Howard and Maguire (2001) have already questioned the application of the above assumption regarding plannability, linearity etc., to the service industries. In particular, the nature of production in the service industries is far from planned or plannable. Production activity is geared by the time of customer service which takes place in an unpredictable environment: they must meet, and even exceed (Maguire and Howard, 2001), customer expectation without knowing those customers (i.e. their preferences or sometimes even their numbers) until they turn up. The expectations of the customer in this sector of commerce include, however, service of the meal on the plate to the customer at the time agreed and not five minutes later.
A small part of a larger research programme is now reported for the first time which is used to further discussion on how quality management impinges on health and safety management in one particular part of the service sector.

Method

While a fuller description of the methods used in the earlier phases of the study are described in Maguire and Howard (2001), in summary they were as follows:
● an examination of national data regarding reported incidents for the catering industry;
● three extended periods of observation in teaching kitchens in a hotel school;
● an examination of the ‘accident book’ records for the same hotel school;
● continuous measurements made of temperature and noise between 08.00 hrs and 15.00 hrs for one day in one of the teaching kitchens;
● unstructured interviews of eleven chef-lecturers;
● a second follow-up of semi-structured interviews with two of the more senior chefs
For this part of the study, a meeting was held consisting of ten of the eleven chef-lecturer participants in the interviews plus the author and his fellow researcher. The meeting was run on the lines of Melucci’s feedback sessions used in his studies of collective action in the 1980s (Melucci 1989, 1996). In summary, Melucci collected a variety of information, including individual discussions with members of the movement under study, and fed them back to the assembled group in order to encourage reflection.
Prior to the meeting, analysis had been made of the observations, interview transcriptions, and the physical measurements which resulted in a series of topics and issues being identified. At the meeting the following procedure was used:
The topics/issues were fed back to the group by:
● identifying the topic/issue abstracted from the above analysis;
● substantiating the topic/issue by quotations given during the interviews, personal observations made by the researchers, or actual readings of the physical environment measures;
● the comments of the chef-lecturers were sought as to the reasonableness of the interpretations;
● further comments were sought to develop the themes identified.

Results

For a discussion of the results from the earlier phases of the study see Maguire and Howard (2001). In summary, however, the main themes that emerged from the these phases were:
● the unique management status of the chef (degree of autonomy and autocracy);
● the social environment in which catering operates; and
● the “kitchen crescendo” (i.e. the increasing activity towards service time which was accompanied with increased heat and noise and resulted in a change in health and safety expectations and actions).
The crescendo was evidenced in the interviews and also the physical measures, especially of temperature (see Table I). Noise levels revealed a general increase from a visual average of 75dB(A) to a visual average of 80 dB(A) but, as is to be expected with the intermittent nature of kitchen sounds (voices and metallic equipment in a highly reverberent environment), these were far from constant with peaks up to 95 dB(A).
The participants in the group discussion agreed that the above themes described the environment in which they worked and they agreed with the existence of the “kitchen crescendo”. They were particularly supportive of the existence of a threshold shift in acceptable ‘safe’ behaviour during the crescendo, i.e. that as things ‘hotted up’ chefs in commercial kitchens expected and tolerated lower standards of safety.
Table I: Spot temperatures over time found in a catering kitchen
 
When asked to develop and comment on the ‘kitchen crescendo’, one chef-lecturer insightfully commented that towards the arrival of service time, chefs become focused on quality, i.e. their attention becomes less concerned with the process of food production (and health and safety) and more with its presentation: “95% is just focusing on the quality of the food” (field notes 6th July 2000).
In this study quality’s ascendancy is at the expense of health and safety.
Elaborating the above theme, another chef lecturer stated that “In preparation time, chef manages the operation. It is true management” but that “at service time, chef takes on the quality role” (field notes 6th. July 2000).
Figure 1. Shift in chef’s focus of management in a catering kitchen over time.

This was developed by another chef-lecturer who pointed out that when the chef concentrates on the quality, it “allows others in the kitchen to take on the autonomy” (field notes 6th. July 2000).
These points are shown a descriptive ‘graph’ charting the shift in focus of the chef during activity in the kitchen (see Figure 1).

Discussion

This potential for lack of proper safety management does not fit with Robens model of health and safety which includes self regulation as one of its three pillars (Dawson et al, 1988). Dawson et al. (1988) discuss at length the dilemma for first line managers with the emphasis, either tacitly or explicitly, being on production. While health and safety incidents do occur throughout the preparation, production, and service (Maguire and Howard 2001), they tend to be less severe in the earlier part. It is suggested that the pressure which leads to the threshold shift in safety behaviour (the ‘kitchen crescendo’ – see above) is driven by:
● the nature of the service industry;
● the need to maintain customers and therefore;
● the paramount emphasis on quality at the expense of other matters including the health and safety of the workers.
It is also the case that the early stages of food preparation and production are more standardised, more controllable, and therefore the attention to quality is less demanding.
The shift in emphasis from health and safety to quality is in direct contrast with the implicit model used by Robens (Great Britain, 1972) and the HSE (1997) which, at its simplest, may be considered as two lines running in parallel with each other (preferably with equally high effort) (see Figure 2a), or, if plotted against each other, would approach perfect correlation (see Figure 2b).
Such an ideal model is not only a practical impossibility, it actually goes against the theory of risk management which sees different tasks taking on different degrees of significance (risk) at different times during the production.
A model of quality militating against safety challenges a current principle for both management and enforcement of health and safety. It certainly suggests that Osborne and Zairi’s (1997) ideal is not so easily achieved. While one may hope for some aspects to mesh together, this study supports other work (see discussion of Dawson et al 1988 above) suggesting that quality targets may compete with, and win out, over health and safety targets.
Figure 2a. Ideal management focus during production

Figure 2b. Equal focus by chef on safety and quality throughout production

If the manager (here the chef) is responsible for managing health and safety and yet her or his traditional role in quality management works against this, then an alternative strategy for ensuring the health and safety of the kitchen workers must be found.

Responses

Two possible responses to this situation are discussed: one more theoretical (arising from contingency theory), one more pragmatic (an example from the mining industry). Both teach the same lesson.

Contingency theory

In essence this says that there is no ‘one best way’ of running an organisation, rather that the form and organisation of an organisation is contingent upon the nature of the business (see Perrow 1970). Thus management structures depend not on the personal style of the individual who is ‘in charge’ but rather on the type of work carried out and the nature of the environment in which the work operates.
The originators of contingency theory, Burns and Stalker, concluded from their study that “there is no set of single principles for ‘good organisation’” (Burns and Stalker 1966: viii) and they made a simple but very useful distinction between mechanistic and organismic (often abbreviated to “organic”) systems of management. Mechanistic systems exist under relatively stable conditions, enabling more explicit and predictable ways of working where “methods, duties and powers attached to each functional role are precisely defined (ibid:5). Organic systems exist in unstable conditions where change occurs and problems and needs for action cannot be so easily predicted and broken down. Here “individuals have to perform their special roles in the light of their knowledge of the tasks” (ibid:6).
It would appear that the HSE considers the mechanistic model to be the only model of management. It can also be argued that the HSE’s view cannot work with the service industry because of its organic nature.

An example from mining

Catering is not the only business where there are competing interests of safety and production and where production is far from a smooth predictable pathway. A pragmatic management answer to the chef having irreconcilable duties may rest with separation of duties and of the personnel responsible, a model of management with which Robens must have been familiar since it exists in the coalfields from where he drew much of his inspiration. In the coal fields, despite mechanisation etc. production is far from the factory archetype discussed above; rather each member of the team has an important role in responding to the unpredictability that may be met. In Burns and Stalker’s (1966) terminology, it is more towards the ‘organic’ end of a mechanistic-organic continuum.
In view of the unpredictability and consequent danger in mining, there is a post of pit deputy who must, by law, be appointed for each district within the field; their main duty is of safety rather than production (this is the concern of the colliery manager). Such an approach can be viewed as a ’commissar’ for safety. While there may be little surface (sic) difference between the coal face and the kitchen, the common structural feature of a more organic organisation suggests that the coal field model for managing health and safety (with a separate person who has not only responsibility, but also power, for health and safety) may have lessons for the catering industry.
It is accepted, however, that numbers in the majority of catering kitchens are insufficient for the suggested separation of management duties. This takes us back to the lesson for organic systems of operation.

The Lesson

Where there cannot be a separation of duties, the alternative might be acceptance of an organic approach and its implications. Wilson (1989), in his analysis of the construction industry, argues that, in organic systems, the greatest positive influences on safety are self-regulation and learning through the setting of good example and gaining experience. Implicit in this is that the worker (here the catering worker) must gain sufficient understanding to make good decisions about health and safety in this less predictable work environment.
While the kitchen is more predicable than the construction site and there is probably more formal training of kitchen workers, the inculcation of safety awareness and the skill to assess the safety of a situation are equally necessary. Fortunately, the training of kitchen workers has a long tradition of being in ‘real working environments’ (an expression in the catering colleges referring to use of kitchenbased training sessions that result in a meal being served to customers). Such a training environment can include the consideration of safety and would allow the other kitchen member(s) to exercise the autonomy suggested by the chef above in relation to safety (see results section).

Conclusions

This paper suggests that the idea of managing quality and health and safety is only a straightforward concurrent process within a mechanistic style of production. While there is always a potential conflict between the two, they are not easily reconcilable in the service industry which approaches an organic style of operation. It is accepted that the principles of MCS/TQM models are excellent and praiseworthy and that they can be used in order to manage health and safety. When the targets clash, however, alternative strategies have to be adopted which ensure the primacy of health and safety. For this part of the economy possible alternatives involve dedicated powerful personnel or relying on individual training and competence in assessing safety.

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