COSMIC PERSPECTIVE

Often people ask you to take a different view point, consider something from another angle or see things from their perspective, but it’s not everyday someone offers up a whole new term and position on how to look at the world. Well that is exactly what happened to me this week. The point of view? Well we’re zooming all the way out on Google Earth and we’re taking the astronauts view point of Earth. Cosmic!

This view point was presented in a wide ranging and intellectually challenging conversation between Russel Brand (love him or loathe him, he’s a great conversationalist) and Neil de Grasse Tyson an American astrophysicist, author, and science communicator. Who also has one of the best voices you’ll ever hear! The quote below is at 33:20 in the podcast. I wish I could load the audio clip directly into the article! Here Neil quotes Edgar Mitchell, an astronaut from Apollo 14 who went to the moon and back.

He told time magazine on his return that:

“You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say look at that you son of a bitch.”

Whilst we can’t all put ourselves in Edgars place (just yet) and see the beauty of Earth from space. To consider how vulnerable, interconnected and staggeringly amazing Earth truly is. We can take his view point and passion, applying it to our perspective.

I listened to this as I pushed myself along a 10k run in the drizzle. As Brand and Tyson spoke of this cosmic perspective and how thinking this way could lead to real and sustained shifts in global cohesion. My mind was racing with ideas of a new OSH perspective. Forget global, we’re going cosmic. We need to take this high-level overview of how truly interconnected our actions, campaigns and programmes can be in creating a safe world of work for everyone.

It led me back to the IOSH white paper on modern slavery. Now stay with me here. The issue of modern slavery is an interconnected issue, with actions in one part of the globe setting off chain reactions across it. Tackling it can feel either a million miles away from your world of OSH delivery or something so big you don’t feel you know how to make an impact. But I’d argue the world of OSH can have a significant impact through supply chains, government lobbying, local enforcement of regulations and collaboration with other leading bodies and stakeholders.

As OSH practitioners, its hazardous, life threatening and appalling working environments and practices, that should be filling our hearts with an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world and a compulsion to do something about it. This is where we need OSH professionals to not only be making an impact at the local level but also considering how through influence and collaboration, we can have a global impact.

Promotion of IOSH’s white paper on modern slavery and the key calls for action feels like an easy win for OSH professionals to take, in their first venture into delivering OSH from a cosmic perspective.

IOSH’s calls to action:

IOSH calls on Government, in addition to its proposals to extend reporting requirements to the public sector, to provide a list of organisations required to report, set up a central registry for statements, and to:

• remove the ability of reporting organisations to simply state that they’ve taken no steps to tackle modern slavery;
• progressively reduce the ￡36 million annual turnover disclosure threshold;
• require that core topics are included in modern slavery statements;
• act as exemplars in eradicating modern slavery from Government operations and supply chains;
• explore the establishment of a quality-mark type label that indicates decent working conditions;
• run sustained national public awareness campaigns; and
• extend GLAA licensing powers to other at-risk sectors.

We also call on more employers and professional bodies to provide awareness training for their staff and members, so that workplaces and associated businesses can be free of these abhorrent practices.

We further call on those procuring goods and services to use their influence, buying power and expertise to improve risk management in their supplier factories and businesses, similar to the work by retailers in the Bangladesh Accord, following the terrible Rana Plaza disaster.

And we call on all countries to learn from each other’s experiences and for the international community to harmonise reporting requirements and re-invigorate joint action to eradicate modern slavery worldwide.

It leaves me thinking, what else could fall under the cosmic perspective, when we apply it to OSH?