Be careful, experience shows that most who read this will find it offensive…
Meet “Ed”, he is just a maintenance worker I meet in 1994. My first impressions of Ed were he was safe (i.e. always followed the safe work practices, always had on his PPE properly, etc.) based on my personal observations. One day I mentioned Ed and was quickly shut down and mocked for even mentioning his name in the same sentence as “safety”. I was new to this facility, but obviously, Ed had a history. As it turns out, Ed was deemed solely responsible for the facility missing its safety record on two different occasions and this meant a sharp decline in the “incentive program”, as the incentive(s) were based solely on OSHA injury numbers. And Ed, by no fault of his own just happened to be the only employee (over his 28 years at the plant) who had the OSHA recordable that put the plant over its mark. Of course, there were about a half dozen employees who had 3 or more recordable injuries over a shorter career, but it was Ed’s two recordables that EVERYONE, including one of the finest plant managers to have walked among us, who remembered Ed’s recordables. So one day, off-site, I was spending some time with the Plant Manager (yes we became friends – as I have always done with my bosses) we began to once again have a safety discussion (like we always did!) and this one was about “Ed”. I wanted Ed to become part of the safety committee and once “he” stopped chuckling and realized I was serious he wanted to know why. Here is why… and it boils down to this: How do we define a “safe employee” and an “unsafe employee”?
