A recent FaceBook post by the South Dakota Highway Patrol is getting a lot of attention. The pics are alarming, to say the least. But some of the comments are an indication of where safety stands in the United States culture of safety. When people decry government intervention as “crossing a line,”… “that truck driver […]
A lot has changed over my career; some things I thought were so concrete and fundamental to OSH that they would never change. Boy, was I ever WRONG! Take, for example, the “hierarchy of controls” – quite possibly the primary building block of OSH and Industrial safety for the past 73 years. When I was
Leadership and culture are two sides of the same coin; neither can be realized without the other. Leaders create and manage the safety culture in their organizations by maintaining safety as a priority, communicating their safety expectations to the workers, setting the standard for safety, and through actions not talk (walk the talk), leading needed
What should happen to the small proportion of individuals whose unsafe acts are justly considered culpable? Below we summarize in a very simplified way what psychologists know about the effects of reward and punishment in the workplace. The principal issue here is the effectiveness of “sticks and carrots” in enhancing the likelihood of desired behavior
In today’s work environment, many management teams need some guidance on determining if an unsafe act warrants re-training, accountability, or it was a system-induced error. Here is a simple flow chart that can help establish what type of action could be called for based on the facts from the investigation.
Let the official record show… the term “just culture” originated in 1990’s from none other than Dr. James Reason. So all of these consultants using LinkedIn as their marketing platform, decrying a “just culture” is nothing new! Most of us have been simply managing our safety and health efforts with the WORKERS who do the
Leadership and culture are two sides of the same coin; neither can be realized without the other. Leaders create and manage the culture in their organizations by maintaining safety as a VALUE, communicating their safety expectations to the workers, setting the standard for safety through actions, not talk (walk the talk), and leading needed change
If your management is only reactive to an accident, it is probably a built-in response because all the safety metrics are reactionary as well. When the sole safety metric is an injury rate, events that do not impact that injury rate do not garner a management response simply because they did not move the needle
Now keep in mind this is a child in the video. But that does not mean adults would not do something similar after watching a co-worker successfully pull it off! After all, MOST, if not all, unsafe acts are learned actions from co-workers. So watch this short video, as painful as it may be to
Maybe I’m just old school, but is it just too much to ask for: a well-written safety procedure, one that is written and analyzed with a safety pro and the worker(s) who do the actual work, that management will fully support the procedures everyday-everytime, including on holidays that fall on a Sunday, and employees will
A big mistake many make with Behavior Based Safety is focusing on people and their behaviors while the physical workplace goes to crap! We have to MANAGE BOTH to be successful! An old boss told me, “we have to take care of the house if we expect the kids to clean their rooms!” Claude Bloom
We often hear it: “We have a world-class safety management system.” They are proud of what they have. They have worked hard to get where they are. But most of the time, they do NOT have a safety management system (SMS). What they have is a safety “compliance manual.” A binder that holds dozens of
