Sitting here relaxing this Sunday afternoon, I am comforted in now knowing 100% why engineering controls rule over Admin Controls and PPE. As soon as President Trump and his team mentioned some alternative treatments this week for ridding the body of the virus, a lot of folks latched onto the ideas. Our society, which is indicative of our workplaces, wants some easy way of achieving their desired goals. Social distancing is a CHANGE IN BEHAVIORS and WEARING face coverings is also a change in behavior and somewhat PPE. We see people scoffing at these protections, either as not necessary or an infringement on their rights. So looking back on my 27 years in safety I now understand it was not an issue with safety management – it was human behaviors. That same push back I have lived with for all these years against something as fundamental as Lockout/Tagout (LOTO) is not the lack of a written program, training, etc. It is simply the same attitude by many who we have seen responding to the safety measures the government put in place to deal with a transmittable virus that has no vaccine.
Now that we are seeing the flattening of the curves where these drastic measures were put into place and we now have the “experts” now screaming “see this virus was totally overblown, all of this crap was not needed and we have turned into Nazi Germany”. These are the same people in our workplace that will be the ones screaming about LOTO and how it is overblown, not necessary, and just stupid as it slows them down in doing their jobs. We hear the same push back when it comes to necessary PPE as well. Workers (and the general public) often can not see the risks, even when they can see the results of the risks right in front of them.
We have all heard the argument… “we have been doing this job for 20 years, I think we know what we’re doing“. Even over those 20 years, workers have suffered serious injuries and maybe even death, but the current workers make all kinds of excuses for continuing to do it the way they see as optimal. Of course, no one wants to get hurt AND we can convince ourselves of just about anything – even climbing into a machine dozens of times over an 8-hour shift without LOTO. Workers have convinced themselves over those 20 years that LOTO is not needed as they personally have not been injured and they have achieved their desired outcomes of an “easier job”.
When we look at the measures put into place to control the spread of COVID19, we see a lot of the same mindsets in society as we see in our workplaces when it comes to matters of safety. I said it early on when all the screaming started that when social distancing works, it will be stated that the hazard of the virus was overstated and that all of those illnesses and deaths were blown out of proportion. We see the same response after implementing LOTO, that all of those actions were not necessary and it had a negative impact on production and culture. When in fact, production was UP and the “cultural issue” was the required CHANGE IN BEHAVIORS of the workers to Lock Out before doing their servicing and maintenance tasks.
The correlation between workplace safety and societal safety is no different. It is not our lack of a well-written program, world-class training, etc.; it is HUMAN BEHAVIORS and desires that are a roadblock to protecting humans (i.e. our employees!).