Safety Culture Plus

In any successful system, employees should be part of the process and provided an opportunity to participate in establishing, implementing, and evaluating the safety system. Employee participation provides the means that allows them to develop and/or express their safety commitment to themselves and/or their fellow workers. To fulfill and enhance employee participation, management should implement some form of the following elements:

• Regularly communicating with all employees concerning any safety matter
• Providing employees with access to information relevant to the safety system
• Providing ways for employees to become involved in hazard recognition, identification and assessment, prioritizing hazards, safety training, and management system evaluation
• Establishing procedures where employees can report work-related incidents promptly and ways they can make recommendations about appropriate solutions to control the hazards identified
• Providing prompt responses to reports and recommendations

It is important to remember that under an effective management system employers do not discourage employees from reporting safety hazards and making recommendations about incidents, or hazards, or from participating in the safety program.

Leadership from the top down is the most important part of any process. "Lip service”, is not going to work for you. If management demonstrates a true commitment (not only when some occurs), provides the motivating force, and the needed resources to manage safety, an effective system can be developed and will be sustained. According to OSHA, this demonstration of leadership should include the following elements that are consistent with an effective program:

• Establishing the program responsibilities of line managers, supervisors, and employees for safety and holding them accountable for carrying out their responsibilities.
• Providing managers, supervisors, and employees with the authority, access to relevant information, training, and resources they need to carry out their responsibilities.
• Identifying at least one manager, supervisor, or employee to receive and respond to reports about safety conditions and, where appropriate, to initiate corrective action.

This is the first time that OSHA has used the term "demonstrate”. In reality, demonstration means “do as I do.” This is an important concept no matter what you are tying to accomplish, always “walk-the-walk, and talk-the-talk”.

Reference: OSHA’s Voluntary safety and health Program Management Guidelines published in the Federal Register, pp. 54 FR 3904-3916, Thursday, January 26, 1989 and U.S. Department of Labor Occupational Safety and Administration (OSHA), Draft Proposed Safety and Health Program Rule, 29 CFR 1900.1

One thing that we often forget and equally if not more important than employee behaviors is management behaviors. If management is trying to create or improve the safety performance, they need to ensure that they demonstrate the same behaviors they expect from their employees. Employees are watching management very carefully during any process change. If management’s personal behavior is not consistent with the verbal and written messages they are sending, then the process will not work, the safety culture will not be trustworthy, and the management system will fail. (more…)

In my opinion, there is one mis-understood concept, the audit. How many “audits” have you performed? What does the word audit mean? Typically, it means that you have to find something wrong. In my opinion, this is the case with most auditors. We feel that if we do not find anything wrong, then we are not doing our jobs and out BOSSES, Not Leaders, will be upset with us. In my opinion some auditors find joy in finding things wrong.

We need to get over this attitude and stop looking for all the “bad” things that have happened. After many year in the safety arena, I have done it various ways, but have learned that you need to be fair and only report what you find. Do not out of your way to find something wrong. I would encourage you to look at “audit” as a “conformance appraisal”, which means looking at your management system to see how it is conformance to your expectations. This will help to keep you focused on a positive approach. Under these conditions, you will be focusing on conformance to practices and procedures of the management system and/or program requirements. We continually need to understand how to focus on the positive aspects of safety.

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