Values and Practices that Make the World’s Safest Organizations.

Ten years ago, Williams International and O/E Learning Inc., benchmarked companies with excellent safety records to determine the values and practices that made those companies excel in safety performance.

After refining what they learned from reviewing the common practices of safety inspections, hazard investigations, strategy development and safety workshops, they came up the following six values.

While your views and opinions might differ in part or priority of these values, we submit that they would make a great starting point for any organization wishing to reengage or improve their safety culture.

All injuries are preventable—no one really wants to be injured, corporate processes aren’t designed to hurt the workers, so injuries should be predictable and avoidable.

Compliance is not enough—the world’s safest organizations believe that compliance is the starting point, but recognize that it takes more than VPP certification to protect workers.

Prevention is more valuable than correction—Best in class safety organizations spend their safety budgets on eliminating hazards before a worker gets hurt.

Safety is everyone’s job—workers at the world’s safest organizations understand their ongoing roles in keeping themselves and others, safe.

Safety is a strategic business element—corporate leadership needs to believe and continually communicate that safety needs to be managed as professionally as every other strategic objective.

Safety should be a part of Operations—the area of the company that has the greatest control over the safety of the workplace is Operations; while other departments, such as HR or Finance may play an important role, Operations should have the responsibility over the safety of the workforce. 

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