An Ounce of Prevention

In my opinion, safety professionals have one of the most difficult yet satisfying careers there is.  They spend their time working with employees to help them get through the day and back to their loved ones unharmed.  They are some the hardest working people I know.  When incidents occur, their hours can be 24/7, and they constantly live with the always present chance of have to deal with serious injury or even death.  They balance executive demands with the reality of corporate budgets.  They need to be tough on workers yet show them the respect and kindness they deserve.  The great safety leaders spend most of their time thinking about and trying to prevent injuries. 

If you ask any safety professional, they will all tell you that preventing accidents is far less costly than fixing them.  Just as productivity experts have been saying for years, that improving productivity depends on predicting and preventing process failures rather than spending the bulk of your resources after failures have occurred.  So to, companies need to predict and eliminate hazards that can result in injuries.

Safety incentive systems should focus on rewarding the prediction and prevention of incidents.  By reinforcing prevention in a positive manner on an ongoing basis, you can change behavior and decrease accidents.  Prevention is far less costly than correction. 

All injuries may or may not be preventable.  But all bad safety habits can be changed by using the proven tenets of behavior based safety and then rewarding the change with positive reinforcement.  In the case of safety, the old adage holds true.  

 An ounce of prevention can save a pound of cure.

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