Lots of organizations proclaim that “Safety is Number 1” or something like this. In my early years, I thought this way as well. In reality, we have to have both in order for the business to make money. I have talked about this before in other newsletters and in my talks at the ASSE Annual PDC Conferences.
Sometimes we need to work on and talk more about the safety hazards, needs and requirements. Other times we need to work on and talk about the production needs. Both Safety and production are always in the conversations; sometimes more of safety and other times more of production. This is a both/and situation.
We were always in this conversation when I was the plant manager and you can see from the results mentioned in the proceeding section, we were able to do very well in managing this dynamical balance. It is dynamical because, not only are the situations dynamic in themselves, but also there are many situations going on at the same time around them so everything is always moving. We have to be very alert, talk together, help each other work at our highest skill levels.
I love talking with people and getting to know them. Sometimes it is really interesting and sometimes it gets quite funny. The other night I was at the local piano bar, sitting between two older gentlemen. One was an 86-year-old retired colonel who was pretending to play his imaginary drums along with the piano player and the other guy introduced himself to me 5 times in the first 10 minutes. Sometimes you just don’t know until you start talking.
As the snow begins to melt and the spring winds arrive, it is time for cleaning up the place. Mud season is upon us as the snow melts. All sorts of curious things emerge from the melting piles of snow; stuff that was covered up and lost. (Just imagine: Years ago the settlers kept their animals sheltered next to their houses or barns attached to their houses so that they could care for them when the winter cold set in. They really had to do the spring-cleaning!)
Each time the construction cycle picks up, more people get killed, mostly from falls. Some falls are the result of poor footing. Some falls result from poor housekeeping and clutter. Some falls result from inadequate barricading of edges or open holes in the floors. Some falls result from poor pre-shift preparations and the work is started before things are ready. Some falls result from people rushing to get the work done quickly. Some falls result from some people being careless.
With all the uncertainties and variable working conditions, all of you need to be looking out for each other – I mean really watching and helping each other. Being ready and willing to stop unsafe work is important. It is critical that information flows freely so that everyone knows what is going on and are able to work closely together.
We know that it can, and we prove it over and over again, as we work with leaders, their teams, and their businesses.
Our new year is full of opportunities, dark clouds and unknowns. The world is full of strife of all sorts. Our political situation here in the U.S. is full of hope, tension, noise, and unknowns. So many people are screaming about their opinions that it is almost impossible to hear. I get so tired of it that I often just quit trying to listen. That is probably a mistake for me to do that; we are all connected and I can’t just go away and hide. None of us can do that.
As we bring this sort of thinking and being together into our workplaces, we can seek ways to improve our safety performance and business results. I have found over and over that we can vastly improve our safety and business performance when we share information together, listen for understanding, develop trust among us and see how well are all contributing, solutions emerge. When we help to change the behavior of bullies of get them out of the work place, we get even better.
As this year comes to an end, we will be looking at our overall performance to see how we did and to plan for 2017. We will usually look at our injury statistics like the total recordable injury rate and try to determine how we performed. Often quite independently, others will look at other performance indicators to see how they came out. We act as if these are independent of each other, but in our organizations everything is connected so all aspects of performance influence each other. Everything happens through the people. All the parts are interconnected. Excellence in safety performance is strongly related to our total performance because it all works through the will of the people.
Work-as-imagined and work-as-done are ideas developed by Erik Hollnagel in his book, Safety-I and Safety-II (2014. Ashgate Publishing Ltd., UK). Safety I is our traditional top-down management approach to safety management where rules and procedures are issued by those far from the actual work. This is like the approach discussed in the proceeding paragraph. I think that a lot of people are trying to do good safety work from the Safety I perspective, but the results are not improving fast enough.
