Hi everyone,

I’m hoping, and praying (I’m an atheist, that’s how desperate I am) that someone on this forum has experience of managing a Hospital Switchboard and would therefore have an understanding and an empathy for the unique circumstances of that environment, and of providing a sensitive service to patients, preferably without having to raise our voices to bereaved relatives to be heard, or having to ask cancer patients several times to repeat themselves, and having to deal with emergency and critical situations which put people’s lives at risk if we don’t deal with those situations promptly and effectively.

I'm hoping that someone can please give me some definitive advice on a legal issue regarding hearing, noise, and health surveillance, which is actually contributing to being tantamount, in my view, to 'constructive dismissal', in that it is seriously affecting my ability to be able to do my job effectively, and in these circumstances, safely.

I have worked in our department for 27 years, and have worn a headset for over thirty years, long before noise-limiting headsets were invented, I am over 50 years old, and I know my hearing has deteriorated, even before my hearing assessment. My colleagues and I have raised concerns about the excessive noise on numerous occasions when actions have been taken that increase the noise within the department. I have raised concerns about hearing and requested health surveillance for myself and my colleagues, specifically because of those concerns, but they will not provide it. We even have an email from one of our managers, two years ago, acknowledging those (mounting) concerns, and yet nothing has been done to address and resolve those issues, only further actions which increase the noise, such as additional departments and their staff being moved into our room on two separate occasions, and recently a new member of staff with an assistance dog, who, whilst we all love him to bits, frequently whines, and quite often barks. The current issue I write here about will involve the addition of yet even more non-switchboard staff, their phones, and their accompanying voices.

We are managed by two line managers, neither of whom have any switchboard or call-centre experience and steadfastly refuse to listen to the staff who between us have over 200 years of experience. In my view, for one thing, those Managers fail to comply with the HSE Standards for Work-Related Stress by refusing to listen to the concerns of staff, and they have become increasingly involved in making decisions which are negligent of their duty of care to staff, and to the service we are supposed to provide to patients.

I have asked that work being carried out, which will result in further increase in the noise, be postponed until after I have had a hearing assessment, which is just under two weeks away, and my employer has refused, in writing, on the grounds that delaying the work will incur costs from their builders, with no concern for the health costs which might be incurred by their staff. I have arranged my own hearing assessment through my GP, who recently signed me off sick with "work-related stress" specifically because of this issue.

Just to be clear, my concerns about the noise are not that the levels are such that they cause damage to hearing, which is all our employer is concerned about covering themselves on, but the stress involved at frequently spending our whole shift struggling to communicate with patients and their families, on frequently sensitive, often distressing, and quite regularly, critical or emergency telephone calls. As anyone who has ever used a telephone will realize, somewhere between silence and far short of levels of noise which could cause damage to hearing, there is a level of noise which begins to become intrusive on the ability to hear the call. So spending your working career consistently straining to hear callers, having to ask them to repeat themselves, or worried that we are going to miss or miss-hear the location of a cardiac arrest, for example, is extremely stressful.

Anyway, back to my questions: Is our Management acting illegally a) by increasing noise after we have raised concerns about noise, and b) are they acting illegally increasing noise before one of their staff who has been raising those concerns, undergoes a hearing assessment, which could, I presume, mean that I had a disability of some level? And c) Is the level of noise which could cause damage to hearing all that our employers have to concern themselves with, even in a switchboard environment?

I would be extremely appreciative of any advice anyone can offer.

Best regards

Steven

Steven,

Welcome to CCv and sorry to hear the issues you're having.

Whilst I am a tech geek I have, this morning, spoken to our
Health and Safety Manager. His comments after reading your post are below.

I must however stress that whilst CCV is a good resource it should be used
in conjunction with your own Occ Health / Health and Safety people.


Initially I got this....


That's quite an interesting story!!

There are several ways that he can approach this. Firstly he needs to make his management aware that the noise
is seriously affecting his ability to do his job properly. It sounds like he may have done this in a roundabout way.

Secondly he needs to speak to a Health & Safety officer based there to tell them about his problem.
There will be one there as there has to be. Asking for their help may kick the managers into life and to do something.
I would also suggest that he gets anyone else on board who he works with as the more people with a problem them sooner
it will be dealt with. As they work in the NHS I suspect they will be part of either a Union or Staff Committee.

It would make sense for him to speak to either of them. His Union will jump on it straight away, especially if he has been
off with stress due to the problem. There should be very simple ways of deflecting the noise or even moving them to a more
quieter area. It sounds like other departments can move around but not his. The HSE website should also provide some assistance too.


Oh one other thing I've remembered. There should be a Health & safety poster displayed somewhere (there has to be by law)
on that poster it should say who the local council contact is for Health & Safety. If he really doesn't get anywhere then
they will help, especially as no one is dealing with the problem.

Then a bit later...

It's such a shame when I hear or read of stories like this which are down to a manager not doing their job
properly. Basically I could resolve this problem for less that £100 and probably with less than 10 minutes work.
Next time you go up to the canteen have a look at those stands that XXXinternal deptXXX, they were put there for exactly
the same reason - to block the noise from people going into the canteen - and they work.
How simple is that? His managers have created a huge problem and lost man hours by not doing something very simple indeed.

Shame isn't it.

Good luck and please let us know how you get on...

Regards

DaveA

Hi Steven

Dave is right, you need to make your concerns official, get it in writing, request that you be allowed to see an occupational health specialist.

You managers will then have to act on the outcome of the report. Being in the NHS I would imagine once you have this report you shouldn't have any difficulty resolving your issues.

Jason

Hi Dave A, (and whoever your Health & Safety Officer is), Jason,

Thank you so much for your helpful and supportive comments,

I am actually a Union Representative, but have to say that the branch aren’t being particularly helpful on this issue. And I have raised this and other issues in writing and have been copying in the previous Health & Safety Officer, but unfortunately, he was infamous for rubber-stamping whatever management wanted him to approve. On this very matter, he purportedly conducted a “Risk Assessment”. When I requested a copy of the formal risk assessment, along with all relevant data, knowing full well that they hadn’t done one because they had only been in the department for ten minutes, he sent us a letter saying that he had actually conducted a “Visual Assessment” (ironic really, seeing as it was a noise issue). I had to write a formal letter complaining that in my opinion the Assessment was not suitable, sufficient, or competent, before they paid an arm and a leg for a company of consultants to conduct a formal assessment, but like I said originally, they were only concerned that the noise levels didn’t reach the legal levels.

However, in a very rare stroke of luck, the new, more senior Health & Safety Officer is someone I actually shared an office with years ago when I spent eight years actually as the Switchboard & Telephone Manager at another hospital (Until a combination of Stephen Dorrell MP, politically motivated management cutbacks, and my big mouth, led to my redundancy). So I shall take your advice and write to him directly.

I won’t go on too much about this, but unfortunately the truth about working in the NHS, regardless of the rhetoric, and I know this sounds clichéd, but you’re nothing, if you’re not a manager, and also unfortunately there’s a culture of management judging staff by their job titles. Experience counts for nothing. As a Switchboard operator I couldn’t possibly have anything useful to contribute. Just as an example, our first line manager who often says openly that she doesn’t understand anything technical, prioritizes the visual aesthetics of the switchboard room and treats it like her own personal doll’s house. She sometimes comes in at the weekend in her own time and scrubs the place down, and rips information down off the walls that we actually need to do our jobs, without even asking what it is, because “it makes the place look untidy”. Her latest plan is to move all the desks, which currently are at right angles to all the windows, as they should be, so that they face windows and have windows behind them (another battle I have trying to stop her doing that). Our second line Manager who I think I mentioned hasn’t been in our department for at least a year, and that’s not unusual, won’t listen to anyone other than the first line manager, and he certainly won’t hear anything against her. The whole situation is ludicrous and soul-destroying.

Anyway, thank you all again for your help.

Best regards

Steven

Steven, you need to request from your line manager "which I believe is a legal right" to see an Occupational Health Specialist, they are interested in your well being and have your interests at heart.

You said you have had a Risk Assessment carried out regarding your complaint. A risk assessment is based around ensuring that your working conditions are all above board. I may be wrong but I don't think the risk assessment takes your personal health into account to the same level that a Occupational Health Specialist would.

Also try not to go off on a tangent when your explaining this issue as its obviously a serious problem, when you start complaining about your bosses idiosyncrasies its diverts from the actual problem.

Jason

Hi Jason,

Thank you for your reply, and sorry for my delay in replying.

Since I last posted, on Friday May 1st, I had a full hearing assessment which has proved that I have hearing damage affecting the upper frequencies, and I have been referred for Hearing Therapy.

I have been raising concerns about my hearing for quite a long time and have previously requested health surveillance and had my request refused. When I arranged my own hearing assessment, I asked my managers to delay the work which will increase the ambient noise in the department, until after I had had the hearing assessment, they refused, because "stoppages of this nature may incur costs from the builders". I therefore remain unconvinced that they are interested in my well-being or have my best interests at heart. Thankfully the work hasn't been carried out yet, but they are still intent on doing it.

The risk assessment I spoke about, I consider was competent and suitable, but not however, in my opinion, sufficient, because nowhere in the assessment did it even consider the fact that we are a switchboard/call centre, and did not take into account the associated risks of that environment, such as noise levels through the headset, or the risk of acoustic shock.

My understanding of acoustic shock is that call centres are required (under 'Good Practice' rather than law) to have a policy in place regarding acoustic shock; that staff are trained how to recognize acoustic shock; and there is a mechanism in place to report incidents of acoustic shock. None of the above apply to our department, and in fact out of 19 switchboard staff, I am the only one who has even heard of acoustic shock, let alone be trained, and I only know what I know through reading about it on the web. In fact I am fairly certain that our management are unaware of it.

From what I understand, increasing ambient noise increases the need to raise the volume of the headset, and therefore the likelihood of being affected by an acoustic shock event, which is one of the reasons that the law requires employers to keep noise to a minimum. Also from what I understand, it is quite possible that although the ambient noise may not exceed the lower legal noise level, the noise through the headset could exceed this level, particularly as is the case that we have to have the level to maximum to hear the calls.

You have a valid point about my propensity to go off on tangents, and I shall bear that in mind when considering my next course of action, whatever that may be.

Thank you (and everyone else) again for your continued help and support.

Kind regards

Steven

Hi Steve, sorry to hear about the problems that you're having.

I've carried out many risk assessments with a specific view to Noise Induced Hearing Loss, Acoustic Shock and Noise at Work regulations.

It's usually the latter of these that causes the survey to be done - but I tend to base my assessment more heavily on the former which has less legal obligation but is more likely to cost my client good staff.

The general principle is to consider the voice path in use, ascertain the protection it affords the agent, and the likelihood of it having an glitch likely to cause a shock in itself.

Background noise would certainly be a consideration both because it tends to increase the headset levels and because it adds to daily exposure (for Noise At Work purposes).

To take this further, if you consider that a person concentrating hard on a piece of work will jump more if you shout "boo!" - then an agent who is straining to hear a conversation is far more likely to be startled by a rapid rise in volume on the headset.

You may also be interested to hear that there has been some evidence to suggest that some injuries are psychosomatic. This doesn't mean that they are affected or "faked" - but it means that stress can bring the condition on (because someone is "on edge" when a noise incident takes place). From this perspective, my assessments would always look at common stress factors in call centres (hygiene/personal space, background noise, targets, management techniques).

An organisation should have a well documented reporting process for incidents as well as ensuring that all equipment is well maintained.

It is worth you taking a look at the website of the "Acoustic Safety Programme" who have tried to raise awareness of this issue:

http://www.acousticshock.org

The organisation is far less "public service" and far more commercial than their literature would have you believe, but it is a worthy resource nonetheless.

Hope that helps,
Darryl

Hi Darryl,

Thank you for your reply.

I had read about the possibility of injuries being psychosomatic, and I recognize that stress may be a contributory factor here. (I keep flitting back to my previous messages on this subject to make sure I'm not repeating something I have already said!). I won't detail it fully here, but every single one of our switchboards crash about every two to three hours, and have done every single day ever since they were installed over two years ago, and nobody addresses the problem, other than just renewing the contract with the maintenance company that can't or won't fix it. We have a monolithic unmanaged unorganized miss-spelt database (over 25,000 records and only an archaic simple single search facility) that takes us around four times as long as it used to on the old (non-crashing) switchboards to connect the caller. On top of that, more and more people in the Trust use voice mails or answer-phones but keep the generic (anonymous) message that came with it, and less and less people answer the phone to our callers, so we get more and more complaints and abuse, and we just can't get anyone to listen to us. I'm sorry - I said I wouldn't go on, but honestly, believe me, that was me being concise and restrained!

Anyway, on top of everything else in my opening message (none of which I hope I have repeated) that is perhaps why every single noise on my headset that is above the norm feels like it is screeching through my head, and I partly mention it all as an indication, that yes, there may very well be an element of stress to this!

I had already been looking at the Acoustic Safety Programme website and have found all the information on there very informative and helpful. But however helpful it is, and however informative it is, then its the same as the problem we have with stress, if there's no clear black and white definitive law ('Good Practice' is an alien, unnecessary, and (short-term) costly concept to our management) that I can quote and use to protect myself and my colleagues, then the regime I work for won't even listen, and in reality there is absolutely nothing I can do about that, other than, for my own well-being, bring my 27 years of service to a close.

Thank you Darryl for your very kind and supportive comments and help.

Best regards

Steven.