Here is a great poem I know you have seen before…but this reminds me of Safety; of what we do.
We train, and preach, and demonstrate, and coach, and mentor, and scold, and encourage, and test…but people break the rules anyway.
They take unnecessary risks anyway.
People get hurt and killed anyway.
But like the poem says give your best anyway.
To the world, we may only be one person, but to that one person, it may make a world of difference. May we never stop, never stop caring and making a difference.
Thanks for all you do…YOU are making a difference and I am glad to be a part of the team. A lot of times you hear people say that they never knew how much ol’ John did until he quit or retired. Example: Maybe nobody knows you put the salt on the walk and may nobody would have slipped even without it. But everything, everything, every action we take (or chose not to), every decision we make (to stop an unsafe act, to correct an unsafe condition) no matter how small has an impact.
In Las Vegas, the machines only make noise when somebody is winning (trust me on this) – no ringing bells or flashing lights when someone loses (you’re not supposed to notice how much people are spending/investing). In real life, people don’t notice the safety guys and gals investing all the ‘coins’ (developing policies, procedures, & JSAs, conducting audits, the coaching, mentoring, training, investigating, etc., etc.) day in and day out, but when something goes wrong – safety gets called on the carpet (Ding, ding, ding) – Management asks why we didn’t do X, Y, and Z. When we tell them we did, along with A, B, and C…management seems shocked…(well then how did this happen?).
Remember: We don’t see how many times someone follows a rule or corrects an unsafe condition (because of something we said or did) but I believe it happens a lot more than we think. We don’t see how many injuries are avoided because of our efforts…the lights only flash when something goes wrong (when EMTs or ERs come on-site to deal with an issue). There is still work to be done – but we are clearly making a difference, so don’t let up now.
It is true that after a mishap – Safety is once again important…at least for a while. We help people make better decisions by making safety important every day, thereby reducing the occurrence of mishaps. It IS all worth it even if you only make a difference in one person’s life, so DO IT ANYWAY. I know I will!
Keep smiling and God Bless!