Last week, I had an interesting discussion with a long-time client about the next steps in their safety evolution. While working with their safety team members out and about in the plant, we hardly see any violations, errors, or mistakes when auditing work permits and the like. But we are dressed like Christmas trees during these walk-throughs; thus, everyone knows who we are and can see us from a mile away. When I wear my own HH, FR, and Green Hi-Vis FR vest, I tend to see a different safety world. So, I consciously wore my PPE (different styles and colors) and scheduled walk-throughs with unit supers and supervisors (also different colors) to test my concerns.
The business has made considerable strides in performance #’s and culturally speaking. But this last step is the most difficult, as the idea that “safety is safety’s job” has been around for decades and is fully ingrained in many management minds. To the point that when we run “training attendance” reports, we almost always see the group who hurts the percentages the most are Unit managers (including engineers) and front-line supervision. Just last summer, senior management (VP level and higher) bought into the concept that even if the managers/engineers do not need the training as they do NOT perform the task, they need to OWN the safe work practices so when they are out and about in their units that can IDENTIFIFY DEVIATIONS from said safe work practices. So, the training attendance numbers amongst this group have improved since last summer (still not where they need to be, but they have improved). But now comes the hardest part… INTERVENTION in Errors, Mistakes, and Violations (Routine, Situational, and Exceptional).
In my “disguised” walkthrough with these managers, engineers, and front-line supervisors, we encountered over 20 situations that needed our immediate intervention. Compare that to the week spent doing the same type of walk-throughs with the safety team members, and we NEVER came across that many opportunities to audit and in those limited opportunities we did have to audit, we found fewer issues. Why? How could this be?
