Occupational Health and Safety: un-risky business

In a dynamic industry where all minds are fixated on the finished product, does OHS take a back seat to the ‘important stuff’? Micah Chua writes.

While Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) for any industry has a reputation for being bureaucratic, complex and generally difficult, perhaps things have a potential to be different for the screen industry.
“You can do safety and it doesn’t have to be boring,” says Bethwyn Serow, policy manager for the Screen Producers Association of Australia (SPAA).
“You don’t have to watch paint dry; you can get the concept, absorb it, move on and get on with production.”
These were certainly the sentiments adopted by Film Victoria a couple of years ago.
“What we were hearing from our screen practitioners, and what we’ve found out from our own research, is that OHS obligations are very complex and there was a need for a simple and uniform way
for employers to implement safety in the workplace,” CEO Sandra Sdrauligh told Encore.
A combination of this attitude and an increased legal and social awareness for safety in the workplace over the past few years spurred the agency to take a leadership role in the issue. The resulting product was a new OHS management system industry-wide which was used on productions as diverse as Chris Lilley’s new series Angry Boys, Wilfred series 2 and international
blockbusters such as Knowing and Don’t be Afraid of The Dark. The success of the new system brought Film Victoria recognition as a finalist for Best Management Strategy in the 2008 Worksafe awards.
DO IT ONLINE
In NSW, policy makers and members of the industry are doing their bit to move the OHS sector along; the most recent effort being the joint initiatives taken by SPAA and consultants OHS Media with their online training course Ensure a Safe Workplace, available online on the SPAA website, free of charge.
The course was initiated to mimic the success of Screen Victoria and is funded by a $90,000 grant by WorkCover NSW.
The online course, separated into four different units, provides guides to read, video case studies to watch, assessment quizzes to complete, personal journals to reflect and an online forum for community discussion. Interviews and behind-the-scenes footage on productions such as the Project Greenlight feature Solo and the documentary The Bonediggers provide further insight into the OHS process on set with detailed accounts from experienced professionals.
These elements combined are designed to resist a one-size-fits-all OHS model.

“The aim of the online training has been to try and bring it very specifically to the industry and to think about what you’re dealing with during a day-to-day basis,” said SPAA’s Serow. “We’ve had a pretty good response.”
Resources are being pulled to make the OHS process as relevant, engaging and implementable as possible. Of course, the other main incentive behind taking the course comes with the industry-recognised accreditation received upon completion, the practical implication being the registration with a national training body, and a professional demonstration of competency to be considered and valued by producers and prospective employers.
“We don’t want to make money off this,” said Serow when asked by Encore what the strategy was behind making the training program free of charge.

“It really is about a service to the industry.”
For SPAA, 200 would be an ideal number of participants. At press time, the program had 170 registered candidates, and 40 had completed the course.
LOOKING BACK
These initiatives enacted by Film Victoria, SPAA and other organisations are not merely knee-jerk reactions to changing legal obligations or spikes in safety incidents. The film and television sector as a matter of fact has had a very positive history when it comes to the safety of those who work in it.
According to the latest injury statistics provided by WorkCover NSW for 2007-08, the film and television industry, in comparison with others, ranks significantly low in areas of fatalities, injuries and time lost in weeks, managing to secure a place in the bottom five in all of those areas out of 30 listed industries.
Perhaps the reason behind such positive statistics is the proactive nature of the industry. Peter Wasson, managing director of OHS Media certainly thinks so.