Introduction
Perhaps the best indication of what’s wrong with safety is the time I spent wrestling with myself over the name of the book. Would anyone, unless they were forced to in a college course, actually buy a book on safety, let alone a book on what’s wrong with it? (If you are sitting in a college class right now, bare with me, you will be glad you did.)
Safety is not sexy, and generally the poor schmuck who is in charge of the safety program is not well respected, and overall given little attention until something dramatic happens. Safety is typically viewed similarly to paying taxes, a necessary evil that if most executives could they would do away with, as many have. Yet again many who have completed their last plant inspection and employee training program may feel that they have their safety under control and that such a book is for the “others”. That may well be, but it is unlikely.
As I began writing this book, my intention was to bring to the forefront the frustration that I feel when I see, or hear of a senseless, injury or a death or tragedy. Why? Because in all, yes all, situations it could have been avoided. People where simply too busy, too rushed, lacked the knowledge, did not fully plan or evaluate, or downright did not care (for any number of reasons) to understand and take the proper precautions that would have protected their employees, themselves, their company, their customers, their friends or their family from harm. But who is to blame? Is it a particular company, their managers and supervisors? Is it the employees? Is it society, globalization, bureaucracy, the marketing industry, the film industry, my stupid neighbor, my mother, my father, my brother, my sister, and my favorite, the Lawyers? Depending on the situation, and who you talk to, all share a little of the blame. But why, especially when 20 / 20 hindsight is so crystal clear, do we continue to experience the oft times devastating results of so-called “Accidents”? Was the risk so small that no one felt the need to do anything? Did the costs outweigh he perceived benefit? Does the very word “Accident:” let everyone off the hook? Or was it simply not cool to be safe?
Many may react negatively to this book, especially those in the safety profession, and that is the intent. We all need to take a look in the mirror and understand why; overall, “Safety” is no more than an ethical buzzword. NO? Then explain to me why we are more concerned over 1,000 convicted rapists and murders being executed than we are over the more than 300,000 auto fatalities and 200,000 workplace fatalities, they are just as dead.
Nor do we worry about the 1,000,000-workplace injuries and the estimated 3,000,000 non-work related debilitating injuries, not to mention the environmental exposures (most likely unquantifiable, that happen every year in this country. This is not to imply that the premise of this book is global and all encompassing, yet it does point to a main premise that we can not evaluate safety in the workplace, without evaluating all these arguably contributing factors. Why is it almost deemed acceptable to have a certain amount of injuries, accidents, explosions, contusions, fires, crashes and yes fatalities, yet the nation is outraged over one husbands quest to put his vegetable wife out of her misery. What’s wrong?
Safety is also a rather mature field, not much new is going on, unless you are from the perspective of someone embedded in the safety profession who is constantly searching for the next promising silver bullet to slay the loss monster. Other than that, void major incident, safety just plods along in the background, an after thought. Every once in a while a new twist, a new flash, a new promise of zero accidents surfaces yet the message is often only received as a dim annoyance spurred by the threat of a fine, or the media focus of the day as executive rush to make the next deal, meet the next deadline, launch the next product, or build the next building. What’s wrong?
What I began to realize as I delved further into this book, is that the question “What’s wrong with safety?” actually has many implications and similarities to “What’s wrong with our Company?” This re-enforces one of my staunchest assumptions, that if you have safety problems, you have business problems. My Company, Tipson Enterprises, was launched by this realization and the belief that by focusing on the entire organization, we would not only have a much greater impact on eliminating or reducing the loss exposures at a company, but also impact the profitability of the company through reduced operational costs. Reducing operational costs by the way should not start with laying people off, unfortunately that does seem to be the easy thing to do, and ironically, one of the things that is “Wrong”.
The ANSI Z10 and the ISO 18000 standards hold much promise as they aim to move companies beyond compliance and into active management of safety just as they manage all other aspects of their business. Yet I have found few individuals outside the safety profession that have any knowledge of these standards. How these will truly impact an organizations “safety” will depend again on the implementation. A simple word, yet failed implementation is the primary reason why so many pages of safety procedures and “programs” reside on the shelves of safety and human resources departments everywhere. “Sure we have a program!” is the assuring exclamation. Yet regulations and programs do not prevent loss, people do. And herein lays the problem and the reason I intend on having a job for a long time. What’s wrong?
This is not written for the companies whose top brass has realized the importance of safety and demanded nothing less than a total, sustainable safety culture. However, given that those in this group account for roughly 2% of today’s
There are countless companies and organizations that, at first glance have an adequate "program" in OSHA’s eyes, yet fail to realize the savings and loss prevention that such programs are meant to provide. They are strictly compliance-based organizations doing what the regulations are trying to tell them to do. They also fail to see the connection to their bottom line profitability, not just from potential savings on their insurance premiums, but from the improvements in the core process of their organization, where the true financial rewards lie. What’s wrong?
Why isn’t there a national outrage for every workplace fatality, every auto crash that results in a fatality, every fire that results in a death, and every product defect or misuse that results in injury? These people were very alive and most living happy productive lives, yet there is barely a head line outside the local community were the incident occurred unless there is some kind of extended drama that the media can react to, like miners being trapped in a mine after an explosion. WHAT’S WRONG DAMMIT?
Rights reserved James D. Tippett, MBA, CSP, ARM
www.tipsonxl.com
2 comments:
What is in this blog, IS! and loved by all.
And now as many companies look to trim further into 2009, now cutting into the lean, we are already seeing further cuts to health and safety and risk management people. Even at the insurance companies, who oddly enough have a distinct interest in controlling the loss exposures at their clients operations.
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