It’s
always good to do an inventory of the basic components of your over safety
program to keep and refine those things that are working well, to refine and
improve those things that are marginal, and to delete those things things that
don’t benefit your overall effort.
Judy Agnew and Aubrey Daniels,
safety experts and authors of “Safe By Accident,” recently sent a list of points critiquing certain common
safety practices. Here is what the authors had to say:
1. Don’t base safety incentives on incident
rates. Having zero incidents
is the ultimate goal of safety, but this flawed system unintentionally rewards
luck, can encourage employees to not report incidents to avoid losing the
incentive, and may result in reinforcing unsafe and unethical behavior.
Instead, an incentive system should be based on motivating employees to engage
in pinpointed safe behaviors.
2. Understand the value of near misses. There should be a prescribed way to produce a
product in a safe, efficient manner. Any deviation from that should be
classified as a near miss—sensitizing employees to observe deviations in their
own behavior and that of other employees. Near misses provide valuable
information about training, supervision and teamwork.
3. Don’t punish mistakes. Employees often fail to report safety
concerns because they fear reprisal. Punishing unsafe behavior creates a
culture of cover-ups.
4. Understand that checklists are not
foolproof. Checklists can
become an important tool for developing sound behavior and producing
long-lasting change, but sometimes people assume the very implementation is all
that is required to change behavior, when it will only result in temporary
change. Items should be observed apart from the checklist to ensure quality and
safety. In addition, modify checklists by conducting post-mortems on projects
and procedures to pinpoint tasks, roles, and responsibilities even more
specifically.
5. Ditch inspirational safety signage. Without the clutter of signs that have no
meaningful information, employees may be less likely to ignore important
signage. In order to maximize effectiveness, use only compliance signs that
direct specific behavior (“Hearing protection required in this area”) and
informational signs when appropriate and relevant.
To
this list we would add, Use Positive Consequences to Reinforce Positive Safety
Behavior.
To
implement your overall safety initiative requires a sizeable budget. It is natural for us to automatically include
in that budget the proper amount of training, signage, PPE, necessary
technology, etc to make the program work.
It is not automatic for many to include a budget for positive
reinforcement of safe behaviors…the ultimate objective of your entire system.
Think
about positive reinforcement as the piece of your budget that will drive all
the other pieces. It is usually a small
amount in comparison to your other safety expenditures and will act as
insurance that the other expenditures are effective.
For more information on AwardSafety products or services or
other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net
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