Safety Management System

Safety is largely about actions.  But it’s also about attitude. We can observe actions objectively. But it’s harder to see into employees’ heads and hearts and examine their attitude toward workplace safety.  Every employee must be dead serious about safety—or they could end up dead. As well as taking job safety seriously, a positive attitude…...

An Israeli safety study looked at a practice termed “Management by walking around” (MBWA).  This practice has aroused much interest in management science and practice. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the adaptation of this practice to safety management. We describe a three-year-long case study that collected empirical data in which a modified…...

This happens when the breach of essential safety rules is not only widely known about but also tolerated and accepted by peers and management as normal and acceptable behavior given the circumstances. Various factors can contribute to the normalization of deviance:… Membership Required You must be a member to access this content.View Membership LevelsAlready a...

A great resource to help develop a Safety Management System (SMS) is DOE’s Integrated Safety Management System.  They offer dozens of documents explaining each element and how it is intended to function within the SMS.  DOE has been using this SMS since 1996 with world-class results.  I love the structure and have used aspects of…...

Two words that are almost always used synonymously in safety discussions. And to be blunt, these two words are light years apart in science. Take for example the act of flying on a commercial airline…. Membership Required You must be a member to access this content.View Membership LevelsAlready a member? Log in here...

All individuals take personal responsibility for safety. Responsibility and authority for safety are well defined and clearly understood. Reporting relationships, positional authority, and team responsibilities emphasize the overriding importance of safety.   Attributes:   Individuals understand the importance of adherence to operating and safety standards. All levels of the organization exercise accountability for shortfalls in…...

It cannot be assumed that workers will naturally begin to report problems, errors, and near misses once a just environment is in place. There are a number of organizational as well as psychological barriers that must be hurdled before a reporting culture can be put in place.   The first barrier to overcome is… Membership Required...

Three (3) ingredients are vital for driving the safety engine, all of them the province of top management or what the organizational theorist, Mintzberg, has termed the strategic apex of the system. These driving forces are: commitment, competence and cognizance Reason’s three C’s…. Membership Required You must be a member to access this content.View Membership...

Despite their differences in tradition, emphasis, and application domains, there is no reason why these various models and their associated practices should not coexist harmoniously within the same organization so long as the strengths and weaknesses of each approach are recognized…. Membership Required You must be a member to access this content.View Membership LevelsAlready a...

Error Management (EM) has two (2) components: error reduction and error containment Error reduction comprises measures designed to limit the occurrence of errors. Since this will never be wholly successful, we also need error containment measures designed to limit the adverse consequences of those errors that still occur. At this general level, EM is indistinguishable…...

Fostering the principles for a strong safety culture is one of the most challenging tasks facing a management team. Successful leadership achieving a strong safety culture will most likely move an organization to the next level of human performance. A leader is any individual who takes personal responsibility for his or her performance as well…...

I have used this tool, with some modern-day modifications, for years.  When I was a safety manager of a facility I would constantly be looking for these indicators as a means to validate what I was “feeling”.  As safety pros, we have a sixth sense of how things are going, but there are so many…...