Safety audits, low injury rates paint only part of the picture — employees can be a great source of what’s really happening
Question: What advice would a seasoned safety professional give to new OHS professionals?
Answer: I’d like to introduce a few truths and dispel some myths I’ve come to discover in my three and a half decades working in the safety management arena. I hope to open a conversation about safety excellence.
Let’s first dispel some myths.
Excellence vs. perfection
Excellence is possible (and highly probable). Perfection is not (and highly improbable).
Although it is highly popular in safety management to get our CEOs to sign off on a zero goal commitment, it sets us up for inevitable failure. It is a much better plan to strive for excellence in creating safety than to expect perfection. There is a major problem with zero goals: They can be reached without being safe.
Safety audits
Passing a safety audit doesn’t prove your company is safe.
Most — if not all — of the popular audit instruments were created by groups of people with the best intentions and are not based on any scientific evidence. Now, most of the questions in these audits are likely to be positives to your company outcomes, but let’s examine a typical example question.
“Does your company have a signed health and safety policy?”
It’s arguably a good way to communicate your company’s intentions regarding the management of health and safety. The problem is the score.
What is it worth? What are other questions in the audit worth toward your passing mark?
Have they been measured in a test using control companies? If the scientific method has not been used to validate the audit, we have to admit we are just guessing.
Some very unsafe companies can — and do — pass audits. That being true, then this audit process is flawed.
I’m not suggesting audits be abandoned, I am suggesting you read the results with a clear view of what the audit score may not be telling you about your safety management system.
Safety is a team effort
Doing safety to your employees and contractors gives you poor to mediocre results.
As companies mature and strive for safety excellence, they almost universally realize the model of “the few controlling the many” plateaus their safety results. Supervisors and managers cannot and should not take the place of full engagement of employees (and contractors) in their own safety. When talking with those companies who have reached safety excellence, they will all tell you that, in their evolution to excellence, there came a point where they had to give it back to their employees. Doing safety with people has been proven to enhance your outcomes. People support what they had a hand in creating.
Now, let’s look at some truths.
Employees know best
When your employees tell you it’s a safe place to be, it’s safe.
Given the opportunity to honestly provide feedback about a company’s safety process, workers are great sources of information. Usually done anonymously to reduce any feelings of reluctance because of perceived negative consequences, perception surveys are wonderful sources of information. Workers really know what is happening in your company. If it doesn’t match your company’s intentions, then there is a gap that is an opportunity to improve.
Injury rates only part of the story
Measuring safety by the lack of injuries is just not valid. It is true that very safe companies have very few injuries, but it is also true some very unsafe companies can and do work long periods of time without any injuries. This makes measuring safety by the lack of injury reports a very poor tool. What can be measured is the act of being safe.
Workplace safety can be observed and is measurable
There’s no need to count injuries or damage to prove the existence of safety in an organization. This can be easily done through discussions and actually observing the workplace for behaviours and conditions. We call these observations “leading indicators.” They serve us well as predictors of success (and sometimes failure). Either way, these leading indicators can help us focus on what needs to continue to be done or to be altered if we are unhappy with the observations.
Alan D. Quilley is the author of The Emperor Has No Hard Hat — Achieving REAL Safety Results and the president of Safety Results, a Sherwood Park, Alta., OH&S Consulting Company. You can reach him at [email protected].
