Defining Workplace Safety

Your source for Workplace Performance Tune-UpsSM

Safety - a worker’s perspective

"Once you get used to working in an environment that is unsafe, and you get used to working unsafe, then being unsafe is not unsafe to you anymore. It's just the norm."

Carpenter’s apprentice quoted in: Lipscomb HJ, Dement JM, Nolan J, Patterson D, Li L, Cameron W. Falls in residential carpentry and drywall installation: findings from active injury surveillance with union carpenters. Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, 45:885 (2003).

How do you define Safety?

Provide an answer to this question in a:– Word– Statement– Philosophy– Organizational expectation

Typical words provided for safety

• Planning (5 – P’s)• Right thing - tool – material – procedure• Awareness – patience, don’t rush, focus on work• Communication - work smarter not harder!• Teamwork• Inspect• Culture - get home every night• Environment – housekeeping, site layout & prep

I define safety as

Perspective (personal or reflection of business culture) that acceptable control and management exists over hazards and risks inherent to the tasks being performed.

Safety

Must be built-in the corporate culture as equal with organizational finances, efficiency, quality and security.

– Managers are driven to get the job done

– This may strain efficiency, quality or safety

– Sometimes these are learned patterns of behavior driven by the goals and objectives of the corporate culture…

Safety is affected by

Not being directed from the top down, which causes managers and supervisors to:

– Focus on getting the job done

– Balance efficiency and quality considerations that affect finances

– Then safety becomes an after thought or not an equal partner

Safety

Comes from leadership that responds to needs

Requires defined accountabilities / responsibilities

Must have realistic goals and objectives

Requires aligned attitudes to control behaviors

Must become instinctive - people do the right thing

Instinctive Safety Process

An inherited tendency of an organization to behave in a certain way, usually in reaction to its environment and for the purpose of fulfilling a specific need.

It is all about doing the right-thing.

Instinctive Safety Process

Achieving excellence in safety and loss control is about building relationships with decision-makers that empower employees by setting appropriate expectations. It is communicating and establishing a foundation of trust and credibility that motivates people to create, follow and enforce appropriate management processes. They do this because it is the right thing to do not because it is mandatory.

Safety will improve and accidents will cease only when the right attitude and behavior is strong enough to create the environment and instinct that controls the act.

Bruce A. Lambert, CSP, CHST