How do we make safety a priority?

You don’t!  Surprising response to this often asked question.  We've tried over the years.  Our humanist tendency compels us to set safety as the standard.  Yet, our “blind eye”, not an uncaring spirit puts it behind other workplace concerns.  Safety First!  Well, how has that worked?  While we do make continual improvements, those come from regulatory pressure, technological advancements and a clear change from a heavy industrial complex to a service driven economy.  Serious accidents still occur at an unacceptable rate, especially in what is left of industry and in construction.  We have also lagged in adjusting our thinking to prevention in the service sector with ergonomics being a prime concern.

What’s the answer?  Safety needs only to be a common thread mixed within all the other threads of the workplace.  Part of the common fabric of planning, decision making and expectation-at all levels!  Just an automatic part of what we plan and do.

Start with culture, quite frankly an over worked phrase!  But the truth is, it’s important and the very factor that separates average from exceptional.  Some companies have found the formula to achieve the common expectation of a safe work environment.  With our basic socialization within the workplace, hierarchy of position and leadership, it’s not surprising that as always is stated, it starts at the top!  Management sets the tone, the pace and the expectation.  Culture emanates from this simple fact.  Management sets the culture not the employee. To think passing this responsibility down the line to them is the answer only sets an improper expectation and the foundation for excuse.  Effective management does not work toward minimal compliance to regulations as an expectation; they espouse an, “Is It Safe” environment.  This equals the concern for profitability and quality.

Empowering employees to be part of this process gets them to be part of this process, gets them to work automatically in a safe manner and not just toward minimal compliance.

Profitability, quality and safety are then one fabric!

Author: John P. Coniglio - PhD, CSP, CHMM, RPIH, CSC

Managing Director of OSEA (www.osea.com)