People-centred prevention strategies on OSH - Symposium 15 at the XXI World Congress for Safety and Health at Work

People-cented prevention strategies on OSH - Symposium 15 at the XXI World Congress for Safety and Health at Work

September 2017, Singapore

More than 120 people participated in Symposium 15 ‘People-centred prevention strategies on OSH’ at the XXI World Congress for Safety and Health at Work, Singapore. The session was jointly organized by ENETOSH, the Occupational Safety and Health Council (OSHC), Hong Kong SAR, China and the Ministry of Labour and Social Security (MoLSS), Turkey.

The participants enjoyed an unconventional and truly interactive session. Four speakers (Peter Paulus, Hanan Elnagdy, Jocelyn Chng and Bonnie Yau) walked and talked to the participants who were grouped into four sections. Each participant was able to experience three of four exciting presentations demonstrating of how to put people-centred prevention into practice. Nine key-factors were derived from the examples in advance of the session. The participants were asked to vote the most effective key factors in the examples presented live in Singapore and by this to develop a common understanding of people-centred prevention.

Lead moderator, Attiya Khan, asked the participants to relax from their efforts and to enjoy the video ‘Pay it forward safety’ from Lattitude Productions.

The next highlight was the impressive key-note by Kevin Furniss, who offered to take part in the reflection of his journey from storytelling to storybuilding: Safety leadership in the past was about storytelling, leaders today need to invite people to do things together and make ordinary people the heroes of the stories. We all need to develop our capability in building effective relationships, how to gain trust. ‘The inspirational leader listens to the people in her organization. Talking to people about your passion is not enough. To ‘share meaning’ – my definition for communication - you must allow the ideas and thoughts of your staff to help form the vision and mission, or minimally, the goals and action plan.’

The strategic potential of the people-centred approach was outlined by Tim Tregenza with a reference to the ranking of the key-factors by the participants.

Finally Bonnie Yau and Hanan Elnagdy received the award for the most people-centred practice, based on the voting of the participants as well.

The session was chaired by Kwon Hyuck Myun, the four experts groups were moderated by Robin M. Izzo, Alan Cowen, Davide Scotti and Hülya Ünver.