THE 14 POINTS OF WORKPLACE SAFETY
By Phil La Duke
1. SAFETY IS NOT YOUR NUMBER ONE PRIORITY
If safety were truly your number one priority you would close your doors and mothball your business. Your number one priority should always be the continued survival of your business. Anyone who tells you different is either a liar or a fool.
That having been said, you won’t be in business long if you don’t effectively manage safety. Safety is neither a priority nor a goal; instead it is a criterion by which manufacturers measure the efficacy of its efforts to be successful. Safety is a strategic business element that needs to be managed as scrupulously as quality, delivery, cost and morale.
2. MISTAKES ARE INEVITABLE, INJURIES ARE NOT
People make mistakes; it’s practically embedded in our DNA. Stop trying to remind people not to make mistakes and focus instead on preventing the injuries that so predictably happen when people screw up. You may not prevent every injury, but that doesn’t make it impossible.
FMEAs and other predictive tools should be used to identify areas of greatest risk and efforts should be made to reduce the risk of injuries to the lowest practical level. The true benefit in this point is the belief that it is possible and the disappointment we feel anytime we aren’t successful in prevention.
3. FOCUS ON PREVENTION
Preventing injuries is more efficient than reacting to them. If you spend your money preventing injuries you will spend less money overall. Stop thinking that you might get lucky and avoid a serious and costly injury; you won’t. Injuries are typically caused by failures in the system. By managing hazards (procedural, behavioral, and mechanical) organizations can reduce unplanned downtime, injuries, and defects.
4. MOVE BEYOND COMPLIANCE
Compliance with the government regulations is important and tends to correlate to a process that is in control. But we can never mistake being compliant with being safe. Stop congratulating yourself for doing only that which is mandated by the government; you get no credit for doing what you were always supposed to have been doing.
5. INSTILL UNIVERSAL OWNERSHIP AND ACCOUNTABILITY FOR SAFETY
Every job plays a role in ensuring workplace safety. Everyone must be answerable when processes and protocols fail to keep workers safe. Hold workers accountable for eliminating hazards rather than for injuries.
6. SHIFT THE OWNERSHIP OF SAFETY TO OPERATIONS
Operations has the greatest control and oversight of the safety of the workplace. Operations leadership should conduct routine reviews of key safety metrics. Safety as a function should be instructive and should help Operations to be more efficient.
7. THE ABSENCE OF INJURIES DOES NOT NECESSARILY DENOTE THE PRESENCE OF SAFETY
Safety is an expression of probability. No situation is ever 100 percent risk free. Safety must be managed in terms of risk not by taking a body count.
8. AVOID SHAME AND BLAME POLICIES AND TACTICS
Workers do not want to get hurt and manufacturing processes are not supposed to hurt them; no amount of behavior modification will change this.
9. INVEST IN BASIC SKILLS TRAINING
The best way to ensure worker safety is by providing them with good foundational training in the tasks they are routinely expected to do. People who are skilled at the basic tasks associated with their jobs are far less likely to be injured.
10. END SAFETY GIMMICKS
There is a cottage industry devoted to taking your money in the name of safety rewards. Incentives should only be used to reward active participation in safety, not to reward an absence of reported injuries. Frankly, why isn’t coming home in one piece reward enough?
Most workers I’ve talked to find safety incentives condescending and somewhat insulting. As one put it, “They give us a pizza party at the end of the month if we don’t kill anyone. It’s as if they think the only reason we will ever work safe is for the pizza”.
11. STOP COMPARING YOUR SAFETY PERFORMANCE TO THE INDUSTRY AVERAGE
Measuring an organization’s safety record relative to the broader industry average is meaningless and should be abandoned. Instead, use a combination of lagging and leading indicators to attain a more meaningful view of your overall performance in safety.
12. ENCOURAGE BETTER DECISION MAKING
People take risks and that is not necessarily a bad thing. Our policies and procedures can never cover every contingency. We need to invest in training to help our workers to avoid making bad judgment calls and stupid decisions.
13. STOP LETTING SAFETY BLAME OPERATIONS FOR ITS OWN INADEQUACIES
Whenever I suggest a substantive change in how the Safety function does business, I am invariably told that the Operations leadership will never support my idea. Safety must be a key resource to Operations and stop whining every time it doesn’t get its way.
Instead of impeding Operations and hampering its progress, Safety must support Operations to find safe ways of accomplishing organizational goals instead of working at cross-purposes with Production. Safety needs to get out of the business of telling Operations “no” and Operations must collaborate with Safety to reduce risk as much as is practical.
14. STOP TRYING TO MANIPULATE WORKERS’ BEHAVIORS
Safety is not about managing people’s behavior; it’s about managing risk. Behavioral psychology is overused and frequently misused in commercial safety solutions. Behavior-based safety appeals to operations executives who are looking for a magic bullet. In reality, it is too often snake oil being sold by the greedy to the dim-witted.
It’s high time that we stop treating safety like it’s some mystical secret. Let’s stop hiding behind the platitudes and get to work. If the Safety function can’t support business than it’s time to get rid of it. Those safety professionals who understand the core business of the organizations in which they work should be celebrated, while those who simply collect a paycheck should be excused out the door.
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About the Author: Phil La Duke is a partner in the Performance Assurance Practice at ERM: Environmental Resources Management, 3352 128th Avenue, Holland, MI 49424, 313-244-2525, www.erm.com. You can also follow Phil and reach him on his blogs at www.philladuke.wordpress.com.
Another great article, Phil, but OMG! Why would I want to enlarge your photo??
You really hit the nail on the head that safety is not a priority and that it is a business element that needs to be carefully managed just like other elements such as quality, etc. I’ll be quoting some of this article in my Safety Metrics webinar this morning.
Tell me about it. With a hat size of 7 3/4 my head is plenty big. Thanks Mike, it’s always great hearing from you.
As an engineer, I really enjoyed this article. Some great points that companies really need to absorb, if they want their safety record improve. It’s about ownership.
Thanks Phil.
Thank you Mike. I think it’s sometimes easy for companies to get so wrapped up in the human side of worker safety that they lose sight of the fact that it gets easy to forget that worker injuries are caused by system failures. Yes, protecting workers is important, but the best way to do so is with a reliable and robust process.
Great points Phil.
Your first point is the best. I am of the personal opinion that if a company has signs or says safety is their first priority, then they are lying to themselves. Safety is part of healthy organization, but no more important than production and quality. Truly safe companies are always asking, “How can we safely make this product more efficiently and better quality so the customer gets a better value?”
I’m glad I found someone that shares some of my opinions.
David:
I have always said that injuries are just another inefficiency. It may sound cold, but no company exists primarily to protect its workers. We all—individuals and companies—go to work to make money so we can make a living. But we can’t be successful doing that if we spend all our money hurting workers. I’m yet to meet a CEO who told me that he would love to hurt more workers, but he just couldn’t afford it.
Thanks to all for reading and your comments.
Phil
All good points Phil. I know when I finally succeeded in getting the safety group transferred from HR to operations our effectiveness sky-rocketed. All of a sudden we were part of a decision making processes that allowed us to make a difference rather than being on the outside complaining about being excluded and ignored.
Dave:
I understand. But let’s not be too hard on the HR function, for safety to be effective we need a strong HR department to back us up when disciplinary action is required. That having been said, the idea that safety is all about compliance, and compliance is owned by HR is an attitude that needs to change.
Hi Phil,
I agree with what you said. You mention “Behavioral psychology is overused and frequently misused…” I believe part of the problem is not the amount of use, but the lack of expertise. Safety professionals seem to jump on bandwagons without knowing the psychology behand it. Should we not rather get better psychologists in the safety management realm to help us?
You also say “reduce the risk of injuries to the lowest practical level.” This level is (and should always be) a moving target as technology and knowledge develops. The human brain still needs to be part of any safety system, as fallible as it is.
Wynand:
Excellent points. I have spent the bulk of my career working in organizational change and I bristle at the fact that more and more safety vendors are billing their wares as “culture change” when they have no credentials or expertise in this area (beyond a book or two they may have read.)Culture change may be indeed the solution to lingering safety issues, but these people may not be the ones to bring that change.
As for reducing the risk to the lowest possible level, I couldn’t agree more. If safety professionals don’t constantly seek to do things faster, cheaper, and more effectively they will likely find themselves out of a job.
This is an outstanding article. Solid truths on every point. I am constantly ripping up gimmick programs and debunking platitudes like “Be Safe” and “safety is our top priority”. I would rather “Be Rich!” If I can get there through thinking rich thoughts!?! It is like I have to get employees out of this mental “funk” that they believe is safety, bring them back to reality and then we work on the fact that safety is doing things to guard against hazards.
Why are people so resistant to just teaching the basics? Our ADD society just seems to want to skip over hard work, discipline and sacrifice and go straight to the rewards.
I think too many safety professionals shy away from training the fundamentals because it is may be outside their area of responsibility. For others they are attracted to new ideas that promise a quick fix (in this week’s blog I explore the very real need to be open to new ideas.) For the most part, these professionals don’t see what they are doing as quick fixes or gimmicks. In some cases they are just trying something new because they have exhausted all other alternatives
I have not read Mr Deming, but I think I am very much aligned to his Safety Philosophy. I think the 14 key points are pretty much on the mark, and there is work for me to do improve some of these elements within my organisation.
Good article.
Thanks Donald. I glad you enjoyed the article. Deming’s principles are so attractive because they are so practical. Not everyone agreed with him, but after decades nobody has ever come up with a better way that isn’t supportive of his work.
Well stated! I have been doing the EHS management gig for 33 years and agree totally with your observations.
Thanks David. I’ve written so much on worker safety (an average of about 10,000 words a month) that I thought it was important to clearly define exactly what I believed relative to the industry. I’m pleased that this article has resonated with so many people.
Thank to all of you for reading and taking the time to comment.
Phil
Your observation of safety applied under the auspices of HR was outstanding. That one thing explains so much dysfunction. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen someone write, “I’m in HR and was just given safety responsibilities–where do I start?”. Thanks for a great article.
Vic:
Thanks for your support. Good luck me finding another job after pissing off HR!
Phil