Safety Management System

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…...

“Name, blame, shame, retrain” is an often-used phrase for older ineffective paradigms of safety management and accident analysis. Dr. Rosabeth Moss Kanter of Harvard Business School phased the situation this way: “Accountability is a favorite word to invoke when the lack of it has become so apparent.” Kanter, 2009 The concepts of accountability, culpability and…...

Earlier, I outlined the six (6) stages of a Behavior Modification Intervention. Now, I want to discuss how the same six-step process used to change the behaviors of hourly workers can be used to promote critical health and safety behaviors amongst management personnel.  Management behavior will heavily influence the success or failure of a Behavior-Based…...

Almost all Occupational Safety and Health efforts need one key ingredient to be successful… Employees participating in the safety process!  Heck, OSHA and EPA have even regulated employee participation (EP) in their process safety standards.  But far too many organizations have not quite understood the concept of Parent-to-Parent engagement vs. Parent-to-Child engagement and almost all…...