A fair number of you are with me on my approach to industrial safety. I am a believer and user of HOP, SIF, and Psychological Safety, the three (3) major moevements in safety these days. But these movements NEED STRUCTURE to thrive inside a workplace. They are NOT standalone “programs,” and any snake oil salesperson trying to sell you their product as such is not a safety professional; they’re a sales professional!
I have had some great discussions this past couple of months about what should already be in place so that any of these movements can COMPLIMENT your organization’s safety efforts. And the discussions always go back to the fundamental safety management system (SMS) model:
- Identify Hazards
- Analyze the hazard(s)
- Assign a risk level to the hazard(s)
- Mitigate the risk(s) with the hazard(s)
HOP, SIF, and Psychological Safety play a role in this 4-Step model, as well as the other elements of an SMS. So I will be writing a series of articles to demonstrate how HOP, SIF, and Psychological Safety can enhance our safety efforts while we stay grounded in our fundamentals of safety management 101.
Hazard identification may sound simple, but most seasoned safety pros have learned the hard way… what a hazard is to one person may not be considered a hazard to others. So it is KEY that we DEFINE and, in some ways, QUANTIFY what a hazard is.
I actually like the Cambridge dictionary definition, although its simplicity is what causes the problem.
