Over my 30+ year career in safety and health, I have seen and participated in many “flavor of the month” initiatives. Almost all of these were out desperately trying to achieve an OSHA rate. I know; there’s a lot to unpack with that statement. Probably the most significant movement of my career was the Behavior Based Safety movement in the 1990s and 2000s. I saw it fail, and I saw it work with unbelievable success. It all came down to WHEN it was implemented, HOW it was implemented, and HOW it was measured and managed. We could say this about any OSH initiative. But like all safety movements, BBS got hijacked; too many management teams viewed “fixing the worker’s behavior(s)” as far less expensive than fixing the working environment, and from that point, it is all downhill, and it is a really steep hill; one may even say it is a cliff!
Today we are faced with no less than three (3) new initiatives, of which I subscribe to all three at some level. SIF, HOP, and Psychological Safety all have a place, and a significant place, in our OSH efforts. But none of them is a “silver bullet.” In fact, I will state they ONLY improve safety when they are part of a FORMAL Safety Management System that has Hazard Identification, Hazard Analysis, Risk Assessment, and Risk Mitigation at its core. This SMS approach is foundational to ALL safety and health improvement efforts. Everything we do has to build on the fundamentals of our profession for the past 70 years.
