Interview/Focus Group Protocol

Attachment E

Interview/Focus Group Protocol

Form Approved
OMB No. 0920-
Exp. Date xx/xx/20xx

Explanation to Potential Mine Site Health and Safety Leadership Participants

Hello, my name is [researcher(s)]. We are researchers with the Pittsburgh facility for the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH). NIOSH is a non-regulatory agency and the Pittsburgh facility, which specializes in mining, was formerly known as the US Bureau of Mines.

We’re here to talk about your experiences managing specific HSMS elements at your mine site. With the increasing interest and use of HSMS elements and practices, NIOSH is researching ways to enhance how leaders can manage elements that are the most important for facilitating health and safety. Since you have experience with managing the HSMS at your mine site, you were identified as someone who could provide insights and experiences about this topic. Specifically, we’d like your interpretation and feedback about how you develop and implement your HSMS and how you ensure the system works in practice. In addition, we would like to better understand some of the biggest hurdles in HSMS implementation, from your experiences.

Your participation is completely voluntary. You don't need to answer any questions you don't want to. The information you provide will be grouped together and referenced for similar and differing perspectives and approaches to managing an HSMS. Our discussion will last no more than 60 minutes. Your responses to each question will be confidential and [if applicable, we encourage you to not share information that other people provide during the discussion]. We are not recording your name(s) and in any public release of results, no data will be disclosed that could be used to identify specific individuals. Only NIOSH staff who are involved in collecting or preparing the information for analysis will have access to your answers.

If you would like to participate, here is an informed consent form to review. You will receive a copy of the consent form to keep as well, since it has our contact information.

[Read informed consent form and provide a hard copy to keep].

Do you have any questions before we begin?

Public reporting burden of this collection of information is estimated to average 55 minutes per response, including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing the collection of information. An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden to CDC/ATSDR Information Collection Review Office, 1600 Clifton Road NE, MS D-74, Atlanta, Georgia 30333; ATTN: PRA (0920-xxxx).

Section 1: Current HSMS Implementation

Purpose: How do leaders ensure their strategic HSMS is actually implemented in practice?

Health & Safety Accountability

• How do you typically communicate workers’ safety/health responsibilities to them on the job?

• How do you know that your workers understand their safety/health responsibilities?

• How do you manage worker safety/health performance on a daily basis?

  • Positive reinforcements?

  • Negative reinforcements?

• How do you evaluate worker safety/health performance on a daily basis?

  • How do you document their performance?

H&S Knowledge, Skills, Abilities

• How/what tools do you use to provide safety/health training to new employees? To contractors? Ongoing employees?

• How do you manage training programs that are provided on site?

• How do you ensure that workers’ have the necessary skills to do their job safely?

• How do you evaluate workers’ abilities to do their job safely? In other words, how do you know that they have the needed knowledge to carry out their work?

  • Are specific evaluation programs in place?

Leadership/ Risk Management

• What are some things you do to try and develop leaders on site?

  • How do you manage leadership development?

• How do you communicate safety/health expectations to site leaders?

• How do you know that your leaders are effectively managing the health/safety of workers on site?

  • How are leaders evaluated?

  • What types of risk assessments are leaders expected to conduct?

  • How do leaders continue to monitor and mitigate these risks?

• When you think of strong leaders in mining, what thoughts come to mind?

• What skills are needed from a strong leader at a mine site like this one?

• What level of leadership has the biggest influence on health/safety around here? Why?

• How do leaders manage different risks/hazards on site to ensure employee safety?

• How do leaders evaluate their employees on site?

System Coordination

• How do you communicate expectations to other departments (HR, Engineering, Maintenance, Finance, Housekeeping, etc.).

  • written plans in place?

• How do you know that these different entities in the organization carryout their assigned health/safety tasks/responsibilities?

  • How are they evaluated?

Culture Enhancement

• How do you go about identifying things that need improved around here?

• What are some things that you do to continually improve employee health/safety?

• Do you have a good pulse of employees’ perceptions of the organization? How? What have you done to assess this? What are some things you want to do but haven’t yet?

• How do you communicate with employees to help correct any misperceptions of the organization?

• What are some goals you have to improve overall health/safety here?

Behavior Optimization

• How do you communicate behavioral expectations of employees?

• How do you manage the health/safety behaviors of employees?

  • Coworker intervention?

  • Observation?

  • Training/education?

• How do you evaluate employees’ health/safety behaviors? How do you know they are doing their jobs in a healthy/safe manner?

• What does safe behavior look like to you?

• What does healthy behavior look like to you?

Section 2: Biggest Barriers to HSMS implementation

Purpose: What are the impediments that interfere with leaders’ abilities to communicate with workers about their strategic HSMS – what is holding them back from a clean implementation? How do leaders ensure that everything is in place for a strategic HSMS to work? (three overarching themes to probe – distinctiveness, consistency, and consensus of the system)

Distinctiveness

Visibility and Understandability of the system

• Tell me about the visibility of your HSMS around here.

  • How do you ensure that health and safety practices are noticeable by employees?

  • What aspects of the HSMS are employees able to see and interpret?

• What are some things you try to do to make aspects of your health and safety management system more visible to workers?

• In your opinion, do you think that workers understand what an HSMS is? How do you think they interpret an HSMS here?

  • What aspects of your HSMS do you believe that all employees understand/are knowledgeable about?

  • What aspects of your HSMS do you think workers have more trouble comprehending?

• What do you do to make aspects of your health and safety management system easier to understand by your workers?

Legitimate Authority and Relevance of the system

• In what ways does your HSMS receive support from high-level/top-level management?

• How is the HSMS involved in strategic planning of the organization?

• What positions here are in charge of aspects of the HSMS?

• How do you believe workers see the organization’s HSMS relevant to their own work goals?

  • How do you foster workers’ individual goals to align with those of the organization?

  • What worker behaviors are often rewarded?

  • How do these behaviors align with your HSMS?

Consistency

Instrumentality & Fairness

• How long have you been operating under some sort of strategic h&s system?

• Tell me about the consistency in the way workers are rewarded/reprimanded. Are the consequences the same across workers?

• From your perspective, are all employees given the same consequences in response to unsafe/unhealthy behaviors?

  • Do workers know the consequences associated with these negative behaviors?

  • What are some examples?

• From your perspective, are all employees given the same rewards in response to desired behaviors?

  • What are some examples?

• Is communication around here consistent?

  • What are the main methods of communication with workers?

  • How do you ensure that employees receive the same message(s) across the organization?

  • Can you discuss a time when an employee was given a contradictory message related to a health/safety issue?

  • What are some ways your HSMS communicates safety/health emphases to workers?

  • What do you expect from your workers? What do they expect from you (the organization) in return?

Consensus

Agreement among Decision Makers

• Who is involved in developing the goals of your HSMS?

• Is there generally agreement among these people?

  • What aspects of the HSMS do people not always agree about?

• Do these people communicate about the HSMS differently? In what ways? Or the same? In what ways?

  • What are the goals that are often communicated by everyone in the organization?

• Provide an example of a time when a worker was involved in solving a problem around here.

  • Are workers involved in designing methods that are used to evaluate their performance?

Demographic Questionnaire (to be completed before the interview/focus group begins/after it ends)

1. What is your current job? ____________

2. How many years have you worked this current job? ___yrs/_____mths

3. What jobs did you work in the industry before this? ________

4. What is your age? _____