With decades of experience in occupational health, safety, and training, Kamarajan M has been at the forefront of driving workplace safety awareness and professional upskilling across industries. In an exclusive interaction with Machine Edge Global, he shares deep insights into the evolving safety landscape in India, the growing role of AI and digital technologies in risk management, and the persistent mindset challenges that continue to hinder proactive safety cultures within organisations. From manufacturing and infrastructure to energy and construction, Kamarajan M, Senior Head – Education, British Safety Council, India discusses how Indian companies can bridge the gap between compliance and commitment while embracing global best practices in occupational health and safety.
In your current role with the British Safety Council, what are your key priorities when it comes to audit, training, and consultancy services in India?
As the “Senior Head – Education”, my role is predominantly limited to providing training services to our clients, although the line between “training” and “consultancy” is very thin, and I do get involved in “consultancy” also in a broader sense of upskilling the employees of our clients. Some of the key priorities we are currently working on are:
Introducing more interactivity in all our training modules to make the content more effective and impactful
Adding tutor notes in all the slides so that whoever delivers the program, the proposed objective(s) of the training program would be achieved.
Creating two levels of training content and lesson plan for selected training modules, such as “incident investigation”, “auditing skills”, “Risk assessment”, etc., so that the clients can choose the correct level of training content (viz. “basic” and “advanced”, considering the level of participants.
We are also working on mandatory evaluation of knowledge and skills (both before and after the training), wherever applicable, even if the client is not insisting on it.
How is the safety landscape in India evolving, especially in sectors like manufacturing, infrastructure, and energy?
Technology is changing the landscape of every industry at a much faster pace than ever in the past. Automation, Robotics, AI, remote-controlled operations, etc., are some examples of the changes that are sweeping the industry. It is more prevalent in new industrial plants that are being established in these sectors. Hazard identification tools, the control measures, Job Safety Analysis (JSA), etc., are going to be very different compared to conventional methods when we use emerging technologies. Unless the EHS professionals catch up with the changing environment, they will be left behind. Although many organisations have started using Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence in the “safety management”, few of them have started using them in the “technical side” of safety management. Using technology is not just about the digitisation of the safety management processes, such as HIRA, Inspection, Audit etc., it is about how the day-to-day routine tasks of an EHS professional can be managed by AI, thus facilitating the EHS professional to carry out proactive aspects of their task, rather than the reactive aspect of running behind the unsafe observations and unsafe behaviours, to close them.
What are the most common gaps you still observe in workplace safety practices across Indian organisations?
I was delivering a one-day session on “EHS Management” recently as part of a development initiative of a leading construction company in India. The session is embedded within the curriculum of their “Emerging Leadership Development Program”, which is good. When I asked the participants about the challenges they are currently facing in implementing EHS in their respective workplaces, some of the questions raised by them are given below, which hint at the most common gaps in workplace safety practices:
● “How to balance between project progress, maintaining regulatory compliance, and managing contractor safety?” This question hints at the candidate’s belief that “it is difficult to achieve the tight project deadlines, if I have to ensure compliance with strict safety standards!”
● “Why are our EHS norms so complicated?…can’t this be made simple and easy to understand?” This candidate strongly believes that “EHS norms are very complicated and hence compliance is extremely difficult.”
● “I am confident of getting the job done without following EHS norms by being a little street smart! …is this wrong?” This candidate strongly believes that he can complete the task without complying with EHS norms by being “street-smart”. I leave it to you to decide what he means by being street-smart!
● “How can we be competitive… when our competitors are so lean and efficient in budgeting ….EHS budgeting is too high in our organisation, if we add all the safety norms to be followed”. This candidate is of the opinion that if we must comply with all the safety requirements, we will become costly and will lose contracts to our competitors!
This sums up the mindset of our present managers and future leaders of various workplaces in India. Well, it is going to be a real challenge for the safety professionals to break this chain of negative views and approaches of the line executives towards safety practices! Safety is considered as conflicting with the organisation’s business objectives, either eroding the bottom-line or by retarding the productivity, etc. Breaking this negativity is going the serious gap/ challenge in the hands of EHS professionals and the CEO’s/ COO’s of various organisations in India.
With rapid technological advancements, how do you see digital tools and AI transforming safety audits and risk management?
It is very interesting to see that many organisations in India have started using digital tools in managing safety in their workplaces, which has made the documentation easier. However, beyond that simple benefit of eliminating the need for paper documents, most of the organisations have failed to reap the real benefits of digital tools. Irrespective of the most advanced digital tools being used for safety management, unless the data being fed into the system is “pure & clean”, it will not serve any purpose. During one of the safety review meetings at the corporate level in an organisation, the senior management was shocked to see that a few photos, taken in different views of the same location, were being used as evidence of closing the non-compliances for various audits conducted at different dates in different locations. The lesson to be learnt from here is the fact that unless the mindset of the employees is changed, any amount of sophistication in digitisation can easily be defeated by employees using “fake data”.
Well, the second part of the question about emerging technologies, with specific reference to AI, Robotics, machine Learning, real-time monitoring, IoT, etc., can transform the way we do business soon if those are implemented in “letter and spirit”. I had an opportunity to create a road map for using the so-called emerging technologies, way back in 2019. However, that dream remains as a dream on the drawing board, since it needs a clear understanding among the stakeholders (senior leaders, EHS professionals, and the line executives) about the benefits. Currently, all the stakeholders are seriously worried about “getting exposed” by the emerging technologies about their respective weaknesses of having double standards, one for business management and the other for EHS management.
Are Indian companies investing enough in proactive safety measures, or is the approach still largely reactive?
One of the flagship training products of BSC is the “EHS Leadership Workshop,” and I had a personal opportunity to deliver this program for many clients in the recent past. I administer a mini survey during the workshop to assess the safety culture of the participants, who represent the senior management team of the organisation, and hence the result could be considered as representing the safety culture of the organisation itself. In a five-point scale of safety culture (pathological, reactive, managed, proactive, world-class are the five levels of culture), the results usually range between “reactive” and “managed”. Without going into the detailed definitions for each of the five levels of culture indicated above, the fact remains that most of the organisations today remains close to a “reactive approach” and are far below the “proactive culture”, although many organisations are seriously developing road maps towards achieving excellence in safety performance, i.e. moving towards the “proactive” or even the ‘worldclass” levels of safety culture.
What lessons can Indian organisations learn from global best practices in occupational health and safety?
People say that the best brains in the world belong to Indians. I strongly believe in this statement. What we lack is the willpower to use it in an appropriate manner towards implementing safety practices in our respective workplaces. We are completely aware of and familiar with the Global best practices. Instead of comparing ourselves with the people who are not complying with the safety requirements, we must start looking at the organisations in India who are willing and complying/ exceeding the EHS requirements. We must spend our energy in finding our unique and practical means of complying with basic safety requirements instead of attempting to find excuses for non-compliance. We must stop blaming the so-called “unskilled/ uneducated” workmen not willing to comply with safety requirements, in spite of being told repeatedly about the importance of compliance. We must start trusting them that they have been given enough common sense to protect themselves from the dangers of the workplace by birth itself. It is we who misguide them, that we are more interested in production than safety, both directly and indirectly, and then blame them for deviations and ultimately the accidents as well. To wrap it up, if an organisation embarks on a journey of pursuing the Five Star Audit of BSC, it will automatically lead them towards the Global best practices, since the benchmark reference for the audit specification is the best practices themselves, and it will take them towards the continual improvement
What are the biggest challenges organisations face while implementing robust safety frameworks?
Most of the time, the safety framework or the management systems are prepared by subject matter experts (the EHS professionals) without any consultation with the stakeholders, which includes even the senior management team. Hence, there is no ownership among the stakeholders, and it is considered as “your baby” and not “my/ our baby”. This is not to find fault with the EHS experts, and I am completely aware of the fact that the stakeholders may not give any contribution when they are consulted. However, since they are given an opportunity to give their comment/ opinion about every procedure, and now they have more commitment towards the requirements that are stated in the manual/ procedures and the safety framework. I have personal experience in developing the Occupational Health and Safety Management System from scratch in consultation with all levels of employees towards the OHSAS 18001 certification (which is now replaced with 45001 Standard), and their commitment to the implementation was fantastic. To be very specific, the person who had suggested certain control measures in a risk assessment template or a modification in a format will go to any length in ensuring that his colleagues do not violate those requirements.