It is impossible to change the safety culture without modifying the signals that the organization sends through the greater or lesser quality of what it offers in terms of technical design, safety management systems, and integration of human and organizational factors. Source: The ICSI “Safety Culture” working group (2017). Safety Culture: from Understanding to…...
Safety Thought of the Week… signals form the culture Read More »
Made you look! Of course, Homer was not a safety professional, but he did have a good grasp on RECOGNIZING HAZARDS and REALIZING CONSEQUENCES. Once harm has been done, even a fool understands it. Homer (800 BC)… Membership Required You must be a member to access this content.View Membership LevelsAlready a member? Log in here...
Homer (800 BC) was the first Greek safety professional Read More »
Dr. Todd Conklin’s view on the popular “STOP WORK” Authority approach is one that I can support 100% and have lived my entire career, so yes, my bias for a Safe-Work Permitting Process (SWPP) will shine brightly in this post. And I am surprised at how controversial Dr. Conklin’s approach has become because what he is…...
Conklin’s view on STOP WORK Authority and the Safe-Work Permitting Process Read More »
How many C-suite executives can actually discuss the safety controls/barriers/activities they invest in every year? We can NOT control the injury rates, but we CAN CONTROL those safety controls/barriers/activities that have been put into place to impact those injury rates. FOCUS on what we CAN CONTROL, and if our safety controls/barriers/activities follow the Hierarchy of…...
Validate our controls that lead to a reduction in accidents Read More »
We often hear the terms “employee participation” and “employee engagement” used as if they are identical in their approach; nothing could be further from the truth. In safety, we need “employee participation,” not “employee engagement”. How different are these phrases? Oxford Dictionary defines them as: Participation – the action of taking part in something Engagement…...
When a situation exists that creates a loss of life, injury, and suffering; when it costs a king’s ransom annually; when its cure has been demonstrated to be practical; and when all are agreed that something can and should be done about it, it is time to stop talking, roll up the sleeves, and go…...
It is a standard error made in Behavior Based Safety Processes (BBSP)… we celebrate the % Safe while the real value lies in the % Unsafe. I am all for celebrating the successes once they have been validated as real; however, to get the potential value from our BBSP, we need to utilize the unsafe…...
In a BBSP the % Unsafe is more valuable than the % Safe Read More »
We need to note the difference between blame (or guilt) and responsibility. A foreman need not hold himself morally guilty when an employee in his charge is injured, but he cannot and should not evade responsibility under any circumstances whatsoever. Remember that the authority to issue an order involves the responsibility to see that it…...
Each time the site director has been confronted with a contradiction between safety and production, he has chosen to favor safety, or on the contrary, he has accepted to “adapt” safety rules to achieve a production target. Each time an operator reaches a production target but has taken a risk to do so, the management…...
As I wrote last week, I am not a fan of the so-called “safety stand-downs” that seem to be all the rage these days. Our stand-downs in the 1990s and 2000s were entirely different approaches and were conducted following serious events. My post spurred a lot of great discussions about how they are conducted vs…....
Now that the “safety stand-downs” have ended, what now? Read More »
As the debate in OSH regarding metrics and lagging indicators rages on, there is one aspect to their use that far too many overlook. If your organization is setting goals using lagging indicators, it should at least be using them correctly. This means that BOTH FREQUENCY and SEVERITY need to be measured. I am sure…...
If you’re going to use lagging indicators, at least use them correctly Read More »
This week I had an enlighting discussion with another senior management group that was just way off base in their understanding of OSHA’s use of injury and illness rates. This company is in an industry that is certainly on OSHA’s radar, and their desire to improve safety is simply to reduce their injury and illness…...
Just because OSHA uses Injury/Illness rates does not mean we should Read More »
