You Can Make A Difference

We all say safety is important to us.

By Thomas W. Eynon

Few of us seem to know or truly understand what it really takes to support that statement. The path is a rather easy one—it's a matter of establishing an effective safety and health management system. A good place to start is by establishing standards of performance and making a commitment not to compromise or accept anything less than 100 percent adherence to those standards. If you're not quite there, it will take some time, but it can be done. The journey can pay significant dividends in reducing your accidents and the costs associated with such losses.

J. Paul Leigh of the Stanford Medical Center notes that businesses spend $170.9 billion a year on costs associated with occupational injuries and illnesses—expenditures that come straight out of company profits. Injuries and illnesses increase Workers' Compensation and retraining costs, absenteeism and quality issues. They also decrease productivity, morale and, ultimately, profits. Statistics from injury and illness reports filed with OSHA show that workplaces that establish safety and health management systems reduce their injury and illness costs by 20 to 40 percent. “In today's competitive business environment,” says OSHA Administrator John L. Henshaw, “the black-and-blue of workplace injuries can be the difference between operating in the black and running in the red.”

Compliance with Standards
Standards come in many different forms. Written documents such as a Company Safety Policy, Safety Rules, Operating Procedures, Personal Protective Equipment Requirements, Design Criteria, Polices/Procedures for Lockout/Tagout, Hazard Communication, Hot Work, Reporting Accidents, etc. are all forms of safety standards. If such standards don't exist, they must be developed. Without standards, employees will determine their own behavior and it will be left to them to determine how jobs get done. The resulting behavior and work performed may not be safe or productive, and can result in off-quality products.

The standards must be correct and reasonable. Therefore, it's important to get employees involved in their development. If employees are involved, the standards are more likely to be accepted and will be more easily enforced. If you already have your standards, make sure the employees were initially involved or devise a review process to get their input. Management must do its job here, by getting real people involvement and not just token input.

The standards must be known and understood, so they must be thoroughly communicated to the entire workforce. They become an important part of your training program. Part of this communication and training includes establishing your expectations and making it very clear that the standards must be followed and they will be enforced. Total adherence and strict enforcement is a cultural change in most organizations and it will take some time.

Commitment by Management
Your management team must be totally on board and must buy into the concept of 100 percent adherence to all standards. Consistent enforcement and total, all-the-time adherence to the standards is the cornerstone to successful implementation. The goal must be error-free performance. You can never turn your back on an activity or behavior that does not meet the standards. You must correct the compromise and follow through by holding all employees responsible and accountable for their actions. If you don't require 100 percent adherence to your standards, they are no longer standards, but simply guidelines.

To verify that employees are complying with the standards, you need to routinely evaluate your employees and determine if the actual practices that occur match the written standards. The best way to do this is by conducting systematic documented observations of the employees. Informal observations are important, as well. Observe the employees and their actions and compare them against the various written standards. Non-compliance issues must always be addressed in a positive manner. Studies show that the immediate cause of most accidents is related to employee behavior. Approximately 80 percent of all injuries and incidents are the result of employee substandard practices. In other words, the employee is not complying with a recognized or written standard.

None of this will work without top management commitment. Commitment is the fundamental element that must be in place and it must start at the very top and exist down through all levels of the organization. The commitment of top management establishes the importance of safety and ensures the necessary support to have an effective program. Otherwise, the best you can hope for is incremental success.

Safety First
To be successful, you must properly integrate all this into your day-to-day operations. Adherence to standards and commitment become a part of how you conduct your business, part of your company's culture. Safety becomes an equal partner with other business issues. Decisions can't be made, work directions can't be given, and tasks can't be performed without a conscious assessment of what impact that action might have on safety. It must be a consideration in everything you do. You have to operate under the philosophy that no job is so important that you will compromise safety. It can't be something that you do only when it's convenient, you must do it all the time.

Obviously, there are other important elements that must be in place to have a total safety and health management system. But compliance with good standards and management commitment is vital to your long-term safety success. Safety and health do add value. This is far more than a slogan when you consider the lives that are saved, the injuries that are prevented, the pain and suffering that are avoided, and the potential savings that exist by further reducing your work-related injuries and illnesses.

You can make a difference. Employees will respond to safety in proportion to the emphasis you place on it. Take a minute and measure your personal safety commitment. Are you doing what it takes to show that safety is important to you?