Absolutely they can.
In fact, this is the case in most businesses where we get called to assist with an accident investigation. These are not SAFTENG clients, but rather a 1-off project to lead the investigation with a referral from a safety agency or a friend of a friend of a friend kind of arrangement. We used to do dozens of these investigations each year, so yes, we saw a lot of major companies with their proverbial “pants down.”
But there is an argument that safety can not have its own culture and is just part of the organizational culture within a business, division, or facility. The theory is if the business/facility is terrible at production, cost control, and quality, it will also struggle with safety.
I have to come to realize that is really naive thinking.
But as I said above, I have seen firsthand dozens of situations where Fortune 1000 businesses/facilities are setting production records, winning numerous highly respected quality awards for their products/services, sales are up by double digits, the stock price has doubled over the past X years, etc. Take just about any business metric, and they are all pointing in the right direction, and there is a serious effort to push for even better results in these business metrics.
And all of this occurred during a time when multiple employees and contractors have been killed, dozens received life-altering injuries, and the recorded injury rates and severity rates are up double digits (and those are the ones that got reported!). They have received dozens of OSHA, EPA, DOT, etc. citations totaling hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars.
So can a company put production, quality, costs, and stock price BEFORE the safety, or at the expense of, their workers?
Hell, yes, and it is done on a large scale in the USA, and I believe that more and more businesses are taking this path.
Recently we were called to aid in a fatality investigation at a Fortune 500 company. Upon our arrival, we could not help but notice what the company wanted guests to know about them. There were countless quality awards from dozens of recognizable 3rd party QC assessment organizations. The large-screen TV had CNBC live, but somehow the facility had all the business data (Sales, Stock Price, ROI, and news stories about the growth of the business) on the other half of the screen. As safety pros we quickly recognized there is not one mention of safety.
As we walked to the accident scene, we noticed that a production line was down, so I asked if this line had the facility. I was told no; the line was down because of an internal QA concern. We got to the accident scene, and there was some yellow CAUTION barricade tape on the floor; the line was back in operation, and the guard around the power transmission device was still not in place – BUT THE LINE WAS BACK IN OPERATION!
So they will shut down a production line for a QA concern, but the one that took a worker’s life just the day before is put back into operation with the very hazard that killed the worker still unguarded! They could not even maintain the caution tape for 24 hours! I suggested this line be shut down immediately, and for sure before the OSHA CSHO arrives in the coming hours. I was told that would require permission from the plant manager, who later told us the line would not be shut down. So I asked about the missing guard, and she told me that I was not there to worry about the condition of the line but to determine the cause of the accident – which, not shockingly, the management team had deemed this accident as an “unsafe act” by the deceased.
This company’s production, quality, and cost metrics were all positive, and they were quite proud of their achievements in these areas. However, safety was paying the price for these achievements!
