Safety Culture Plus

The following is a speech given by Paul O’Neill, the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury that and published in the Industrial and Hygiene news in March 2001. “Workplace safety is a subject I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about and studying."

He backed up these words during a luncheon speech at the Workplace Safety Summit, held in late March at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. He proudly displayed a bar graph showing Alcoa’s lost workday rate steadily declining during his years at the helm, from 1.86 cases per 100 workers in 1987 to 0.14 in February 2001.

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Some will say “How can you celebrate Zero Injuries?” The fact is that there are many elements that make up this zero concept. It is not the injuries that you want to focus on, as the recordkeeping standard mandates. Rather the workplace activities that you perform daily (one-on-one communication (see a recent post), daily meetings (2-minute drill, tool box talks, etc.), weekly and monthly safety meeting, and other discussions around safety.) In this environment or activities, you can throw in development of JHA, put in hazard recognition procedures, safety suggestions, employee participation via, safety committees, hazard submitted, etc.

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