Yesterday, I went to my local mechanic to have my oil changed and my tires rotated. It took me 20 years to find this shop, and they hit a home run every time. But yesterday was quite entertaining, and I could not help but think, “We are not alone” after what I witnessed. A gentleman…...
This article applies to BOTH facilities practicing process safety and basic OSH. Many of the facilities will declare they have and utilize a Safety Management System (SMS) in their efforts to manage hazards and risks those hazards pose to workers, the environment, and the business. However, I have developed five (5) simple tests to determine…...
In the social media “safety sphere,” it is literally impossible to spend five minutes and not be bombarded by all the new approaches to “safety.” In many of these new approaches, they will almost unilaterally denounce the traditional approach to safety management and provide case studies to prove their point. Maybe I am just an…...
The business benefits to be obtained from employee engagement are huge. Studies have shown that (a) where employee engagement was low, companies had 62% more safety incidents (Harter, Schmidt, Killham, & Asplund, 2006); and (b) where employee engagement was high, engaged employees were five times less likely to experience a safety incident, and seven times…...
A former client had an amputation accident, and an OSHA inspection followed, with several citations following that. We were hired to help the company digest all that OSHA found wrong, and there was plenty that OSHA found, but there was even more that OSHA did not see or address with its inspection or citations. The…...
When meeting with executive teams, I like to conduct an exercise to gauge the leadership team’s level of knowledge and direct involvement in the safety and health of their employees. Before getting deep into the organization’s specific barriers/controls/safeguards regarding their top 3 risks (which the team picks), I ask the team to take 10 minutes…...
We see these silly stickers occasionally in our work with clients. Although they are not official company positions, I am curious as to why they aren’t removed from company machinery and equipment. Could this be because management/supervisors believe this to be an accurate statement/belief? But let’s talk about the message these silly stickers really convey…...
I have grown up in safety and emergency response and found that the tools used in both aspects can cross over to the other. For example, I use the National Incident Management System (NIMS) Incident Command on accident investigations to bring structure to the team. In that IC we have a “span of control” of…...
I am a proponent of accountability in safety; however, I also believe that accountability is necessary at all levels of the organization. We tend to be very quick in identifying the ACTIVE failures by those who made the error, mistake, or violation, and a negative consequence was the result (vs. all those times, the outcome…...
One of the top questions I get from “cold callers” or those who have joined SAFTENG and have digested my 400+ articles on Safety Management Systems and all their elements is: So, what does an SMS do for me and my facility? The best way to explain this is by an old scatter chart I…...
We often refer to the ABC Model when discussing “Behavior Based Safety.” ABC stands for Antecedent ⇒ Behavior ⇒ Consequence An antecedent comes before a behavior and may trigger that behavior. A behavior is what/how the individual does an action. (good or bad). A consequence is something that follows the behavior (good or bad). So,…...
We discipline for the behavior – NOT for the result/outcome of that behavior. This is never more true in safety-related events. When we discipline a worker for an injury for not wearing their PPE. We just set the standard for NOT WEARING PPE! So the next time a worker fails to wear their prescribed PPE,…...
