Beyond Compliance: Safer Workplace Culture

July 10, 2026 By Leave a Comment

Our safety industry is huge and makes a lot of good contributions across millions of businesses to help to make workplaces safer.

There is no question that thousands of safety people are trying their best for a safer workplace.

It seems to me that with all this effort we should see fewer injuries and deaths, but over the last 10 years the number of people being killed and injured has not gone down and is stuck at about 5,200 fatalities and 2,500,000 injuries year (based on BLS statistics). Everyone agrees that this is NOT okay – yet even with focused effort there has been no breakthrough. Why?

The safety industry is currently working with organizations as if they are machines with linear work processes that can be taken apart and have the parts optimized. There have been thousands of change processes trying to do this, but successes have been limited. This approach is okay for simple situations, but our challenge is with complex systems where many people and parts are interacting all the time. In this situation, trying to fix a part like safety does not work because the whole system pushes back and spoils it.

a safer workplace is important to employees

When I was a plant manager, I found that in two different plants that shifting from seeing and working with the organizations as if they were a machine to seeing and working with them as if they were a living system made a huge difference. In learning to lead this way, the entire organization changes for the better.

This approach is based on the belief that most people want to do better and that they are intelligent and can make good decisions about their work. We created the conditions where it was safe to think and talk together, share information, and encourage them to make decisions close to their work. The whole system changed for the better, not just the safety (the injury rates dropped by over 90 %).

When I moved into my 30-year career of helping organizations to improve, I have seen similar progress. Not only did the performance improve, it happened quickly.

Making the Safety Shift…

Each organization can begin to make the shift and do this. The site managers and leaders need to be on board. The safety people can be a major help in this shift since they work across the organizations having access to many people at different levels. They can tell the success stories and encourage people to begin to work together in new ways.

This begins with treating people with respect, listening to them, and learning together. The people working close to the work have a lot of valuable information to share and build upon. Managers shift their focus from trying to control the work to trying to support the shift in culture.

Right now, for example, safety people can begin to work this way by having focused conversations with the people about how to handle heat stress in their workplaces. What ideas do they have to improve their working conditions? What can they do to make things better? You can encourage and support them to do the needed work.

work together to make a safer workplace

There is Help Available for a Safer Workplace…

I have developed a way of working with the people in organizations which I call Partner-Centered Leadership. My book, “The Leadership Dance,” available from Amazon, is a place to start. I also have some YouTube videos that will help.

You may also like to read this article, Faces of EHS: Richard Knowles on Being People-Focused.

If you concur that it is NOT okay for workplaces to be killing 5,200 people every year and injuring 2,500,000 people too, and want to make sure your workplace isn’t among the statistics, please connect with me at RNKnowles@aol.com or call me at 716-622-6467. I’ll share with you how your organization can achieve business and safety excellence at the same time.

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety for Business, Safety Partnership Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

YOU are the Reason…for safety in the workplace

June 10, 2026 By Leave a Comment

There’s a reason – a very good reason for practicing Safety: YOU! Your life, your eyes, your ears, your fingers, your toes, your arms, your legs, your brain.

At its core, the purpose of safety is not compliance for its own sake. Compliance is a means to an end. The ultimate goal is to protect people – YOU… employees, supervisors, contractors, vendors, visitors and the public – from injury, illness, and fatality. It is about preventing serious incidents before they occur and ensuring that everyone returns home safely at the end of the day.

When an organization embraces this purpose, compliance becomes the foundation upon which a stronger culture of care, responsibility, and operational excellence is built.

Compliance establishes the minimum acceptable standard of performance. Safety excellence is achieved when people voluntarily do what is right, even when no one is watching, because protecting one another has become part of the organization’s culture and values.

safety in the workplace is for your safety

In a previous post, I shared how the number of fatalities (people being killed at work) is around 5,200 every year in the United States. Unfortunately, that number has fluctuated very little from year to year. If we have more safety professionals, more training, more audits, more regulations, more data, and more oversight than ever before, why do workplace fatalities remain relatively constant? What is being missed?

The next frontier in safety is not doing more safety activities; it is ensuring that safety activities influence the decisions, behaviors, and conditions are focused on the real outcomes we want.

The purpose of safety is not to create more safety programs – it is to prevent harm to people. So, to make sure that we’re really doing what we should be doing in the workplace, what are we really measuring?

  • Do workers trust management?
  • Do supervisors feel pressure to prioritize production over safety?
  • Are workers comfortable to stop work, for a valid safety concern?
  • Are critical hazards understood?
  • Are we watching for warning signs of a catastrophic event being ignored?
  • Why, after all our investment and effort, do serious injuries and fatalities continue to persist? What’s the root of this?
  • If our current approach is producing the results we see today, and the results are not good enough, then how should we be thinking differently now?

How about beginning to shift our focus:

  • Instead of asking if people are following the rules—how about, “Do people really understand the hazards?”
  • Instead of asking who made the mistake—how about, “What conditions made the mistake possible?”
  • Instead of asking how many audits we completed—how about, “What are the few things most likely to kill someone, and how certain are we that they are controlled?”

people need to practice working safely

Compliance seeks certainty through rules. Safety Excellence seeks resilience in the face of uncertainty.

For years I’ve been sharing about the Partner-Centered Leadership process because it works. It keeps people safe and fosters relationships, plus a healthy culture – Yes, your organization can become world-class in safety.

The Safety Leadership Process(TM) described in “Partnering for Safety and Business Excellence,” helps leaders to lead their respective organizations beyond compliance, to safety excellence, with virtually zero injuries. Huge costs are saved as the waste of human suffering, injuries, and lawsuits and bad press are avoided.

You can order a copy of “Partnering for Safety and Business Excellence” on Amazon and learn more about the five simple steps to get you there!

 

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Process Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Compliance with OSHA Standards is Important

January 12, 2026 By Leave a Comment

As I study the safety publications like Professional Safety and EHS Today, there is a lot of effort in discussing new ways to achieve better safety performance, develop better ways to do hazards investigations, evaluate accidents, and being in compliance with OSHA standards.

When I have attended American Society for Safety Professionals and American Institute of Chemical Engineers meetings and conferences, there are lots of papers focused on improving various aspects of safety for the people at work and being in compliance with OSHA standards. There are thousands of really good safety professionals doing this work.

There is also a lot of effort in developing a better understanding of OSHA Standards and rules. There is good advice on how to work effectively with OSHA. None of us want to get OSHA citations after an audit.

I remember how nervous I was when we had our occasional OSHA audits. Most of the time we had successful audits (we had complied with the Standards), but now and then we’d get a citation which then brought down a lot of criticism from upper management. Being in compliance is really important from a career and publicity perspective, so we worked really hard to meet the OSHA Standards.

Surviving an OSHA investigation without any citations is one measure of success for safety professionals. I know that it takes a lot of work to have a successful audit.

keep employees safe

Moving Beyond Compliance is Important

Another way to see how well we are doing is to look at the people getting injured or killed at work. This is not a numbers game; we are working with real people.

This is important to our companies since these tragedies can cost a lot of money for health care or have to deal with lawsuits. It can also cause bad publicity, prompt an OSHA investigation, and suffer fines, and destroy families.

Fortunately, most of the millions of businesses in the USA don’t have these problems, which gives them a feeling of success. They are in compliance. This can lull them into thinking they are doing a great safety job; then something happens and everything hits the fan.

Unfortunately, a lot of businesses do have fatalities (5,200 a year) and injuries (about 2,500,000 a year). We can’t predict which businesses will have a tragedy so many may think that it will not happen to us, and feel compliance is good enough. But compliance is not good enough, in my view. A death or serious injury are devastating to those involved and the families and loved ones never got over the loss, EVER!

work together to stay in compliance with osha and keep everyone safe

A Path Forward

When I was managing operations where we could have a fatality or serious injury, I found that partnering with the people was extremely important.

We created an environment where we could all talk together about work, share our ideas and insights freely, and learn together – all of us at all levels, contributed and shared our knowledge. contributed and learned. The collective knowledge of our organization grew and strengthened as we co-created our future. We treated each other with respect and care, maintained high standards, and addressed problems together.

As we learned together, more and more people began to contribute. We did not just work on safety – we worked on all aspects of our work.

I spent about half of my time walking among the people in the plant, getting to know the people, and building our relationships and trust. I modeled how we needed to work together so people could see that I was genuinely interested and committed to improving all we did.

I had a safety mantra:

“I do not have the right to make my living at a place where it is okay for you to get hurt.
I can’t do this all by myself, so I need your help.
We also have to make a living, so we must work together to figure out how to do all this.”

Our total performance made significant progress, people were more satisfied, we had more fun, and my job got a lot easier as we focused on our growing successes.

I would be pleased to talk with you if you would like to do this. We could do this with a Zoom or phone call. Call me (716-622-6467) to set up a meeting.

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Decades of Non-Improvement in Key Safety Stats Reveal Concerns

August 25, 2025 By Leave a Comment

Let’s try to climb out of this hole for the safety of our employees!

As you know, I have been talking for a long time about the need to reduce the number of people being killed at work and safety statistics have shown why there’s concern.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has reported that about 5,200 people have died at work for each of the last 10 years. With all the people working diligently in the safety business, I expect that most people would think that these numbers should be getting lower and lower, but they are not going down.

Many ideas, models, and theories have been suggested, but we are not seeing a decline in the number of people getting killed. I wonder if there may be a deep, subtle force at work. The way we look at the people in the organization and think about them could be a key.

climbing out of the hole with safety statistics

Descriptions Are Critical

The most common label we apply to the people in organizations is “Employee.” This is a name for the contract between them and their employer. Most of us use this term to refer to anyone reporting to us in our organizations.

This may be troublesome in subtle ways because it carries a lot of baggage.

As their supervisor, one could feel you have the power to tell them what to do, to scold them, discipline them, make all sorts of demands on them, blame them for mistakes, not listen to them, even bully them. Many (uncaring and unenlightened) supervisors treat them as less than us, not as smart as us, etc. Employees can be seen as things which we can just move around (like puzzle pieces) as we please – all while being quite nice, but they can see right through this.

Most people do not like to be treated this way. All these employee-focused behaviors prevent trust from building. It blocks learning and performance from improving. We can push safety improvements very hard, but most of the time only get to compliance, which is where most organizations are stuck. Compliance does not get the organization to excellence.

Everything Changed

When I learned to think of the people as “people,” everything changed.

There were still differences in roles and responsibilities, but we are all people with similar hopes and desires as I have. They had good intelligence, knew a lot that I did not know, and wanted to make a positive difference. We all wanted to work safely, have the business succeed, and feel better about ourselves.

People do want to go home from their work shift with all their body parts intact. We were partners in this work. We treated each other with respect, told the truth, shared almost all information except personal stuff, helped each person to see the importance of their work, gave and received feedback. Bullying and harassment virtually disappeared. It was safe for us to talk together and share our ideas and thinking, to find better and safer ways to accomplish our tasks.

Partner-Centered Leadership Makes the Big Difference in Safety!

We discussed the work together to find better, safer ways to do it. People learned to make decisions to solve their own problems. More decisions were made close to the actual work. We coached each other. People self-organized within the boundaries we set together. The collective intelligence of the whole organization rose and got a lot better. Great ideas emerged from all around. Energy and excitement grew. Everything changed as we learned and grew together.

highly participative leadership process produces much better results that the top-down management process

My role as plant manager became much easier as more and more people pitched in and contributed. With so many making contributions, our total performance improved with the number of injuries dropping by 97%, emissions to the air, water and earth dropping by 95% and earnings rising by 300%. We used these metrics to keep track of things, but we led the improvements by partnering.

As we (as people) learned to partner this way, all the ways we worked together changed having a positive impact on all we did. This would not have worked if we had tried to stove pipe it and just do it for safety. Everything is connected and interacts so working on the whole systems is critical.

This effort to create a better way to safely and more economically do our work was not easy.

At first, standards had to be reestablished, which was difficult. People needed to know that we were determined to improve and quit hurting people. There was a serious problem with bullies who were blocking improvements. In the first two years I had to terminate about 30 people (there were 1,300 people at the Plant) for flagrant safety and bullying problems. Things got a lot better after this first difficult period. Most people want to have a safe environment and not have to deal with bullies.

We also promoted the most qualified people as openings developed to lead different parts of our efforts. We needed the best quality of thinking and working together in order to be really successful. We wanted to be good, not just look good! We became one of the best performing plants in the DuPont Company, in just 4 years.

climbing out of the hole for safety

Conclusion

We call this way of working “Partner-Centered Leadership.” It applies to all we do. Just a simple shift in how we think about things leads to big changes in everything.

I urge all of you to think about the people as people, build relationships of respect, trust and open communications.

I would be pleased to talk with any of you about this if you would like to do that. Please call me a 716-622-6467. I live in the Eastern Time Zone; calling between 9:00 am and 4:00 pm would be best.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Process, Safety Partnership Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Why Are People Getting Killed At Work?

August 10, 2024 By Leave a Comment

Indifference… At a local event this past week, I asked a friend who is involved in safety work the question, why are people getting killed at work? He quickly came up with this answer.

“A lot fewer people are being killed than it used to be before OSHA. There has been a lot of progress. We must be at about the best we can do.“

Then the conversation moved off to the Olympics. He just brushed this off as no longer important.

But this is important to the approximately 5,200 families who have had someone in their family killed. This experience remains with the family forever. And this 5,200 total number is an every year statistic!

Those of you reading my newsletters know that I am constantly trying to help people reduce injuries and deaths by building Partner-Centered Leadership and sharing real case studies that have been published in Professional Safety. We can reduce the numbers of injuries and fatalities, and we shouldn’t just push this problem aside with indifference.

hard hats save workers from being killed at work

Leaders Lacking Insights About What Is Possible

At a recent graduation celebration gathering, I was talking with a family member who has a very responsible safety leadership job in a large company, about my efforts to have fewer people killed at work. We talked about Partner-Centered Leadership and having everyone involved, co-creating our shared futures and taking more responsibility for the whole business efforts, including safety.

I was asked, “How do you work this way across widely dispersed sites?” This is a challenge for sure. The way I see it, this effort has to begin with the CEO and the Leadership Team. They need to talk about Partner-Centered Leadership and walk the talk at every site visit so people can understand that they mean it. The top people need to personally engage the lower levels in learning to lead this way and insist that everyone is involved. The CEO and Leadership Team should do some of the training of the lower-level people.

If someone does not get on board, then some tough decisions need to be made. The message should be that this is the way the company is going to do business going forward. But equally important is helping everyone to see that going home to one’s family at the end of the workday with all one’s body parts intact – no injuries, no incidents, is the absolute answer to What’s in it for me?

My mantra when I was a plant manager was, “I don’t have a right to make my living where it is okay for you to get hurt!” Does anyone have this right? The methodology for success is to engage people – for supervision across the board, up and down the organization to learn how to ask process questions. When it comes to safety, leaders who are in denial, or pretending one “doesn’t know” just doesn’t cut it. Asking process questions can ensure accountability.

We then talked about why there was so much resistance to these ideas. Based on some hard systems thinking, I think that the whole US safety industry with all the training, audits, fines, blame, etc. is driven by FEAR! This idea can be startling. Examining safety from a systems perspective was a different idea – particularly noting that fear was a key driver.

The problem with a culture being driven by fear is that it is very difficult to learn and do new things. Just about everyone is concentrated on covering their backside rather than talking together in an environment that is safe enough to explore new ideas together. When we work together using Partner-Centered Leadership, we can open up the vast knowledge that is lying hidden in our organizations. When we treat people with respect, listen and learn together, amazing new ideas and possibilities bubble up.

Everything changes! Productivity goes up. Earnings go up, Safety improves. The culture becomes one where almost everyone is learning, growing, taking more responsibility and producing great results. New possibilities emerge which often lead to much better earnings.

workplaces should value safety

Partner-Centered Leadership

When the CEO and the Leadership Team learn what is possible and how to work this way with authenticity and caring, this can spread throughout their organization and achieve significantly better results. It takes some effort and dedication, but there is no need for new capital investment. In a sense, Partner-Centered Leadership is free!

Contact me (716-622-6467) and let’s discuss how this can work for you and your organization.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Process Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

June is National Safety Month

June 11, 2020 By Leave a Comment

Safety Challenges are Still With Us!

national safety monthIn times like this, when the business and production activities are ramping up, there is a real danger that safety problems will show up. Any time the level of activity changes, up or down, is a time of danger.

Talk with the people about these issues as well. Every day have tool box or pre-start meetings to talk about the challenges for the day. Ask the people what their biggest hazards are for the day and what they are doing to prepare for them and to protect themselves and the processes. At the end of the day, have another safety conversation and reflect on the day and whether the things that they talked about at the start really helped. Talk about the surprise for the day and how they overcame these challenges.

Keep the safety dialogue going. One of the best ways to show that you really care about the people is to work hard on the safety front. Go into the workplaces, listen, talk together, and build collaboration, helping everyone to work towards a healthy, safe and profitable business.

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Safety II – What it is…and Why we Need it!

March 11, 2019 By Leave a Comment

In my last Safety newsletter, I wrote about the need to significantly improve our safety performance.

safety excellence in business leadershipI feel we are not moving fast enough to get to higher levels of performance. Way too many people are getting hurt and killed. Safety is a part of all we are doing and the whole system needs to be making improvements.

A big step was taken towards this goal in a Safety II in Practice Workshop in Saint Petersburg, Florida, on February 24-27, 2019. This excellent gathering was organized and brought together by Tom McDaniel, a widely experienced, practical safety leader. One speaker was Eric Hollnagel who has written several books about Safety II. He summarizes Safety II as “the ability to succeed under varying conditions, so that the number of intended and acceptable outcomes is as high as possible. The Safety II perspective looks at how work goes well and tries to understand how that happens in order to ensure that it will happen again.” The shift from Safety I, where we look at what went wrong, to Safety II where we look at what is going right and learn from it is critical for our work to attain higher levels of performance.

Tom McDaniel spoke of our obligation to present the closest interpretation of the truth in our organizations enabling the people to be given enough information to make the best possible decisions. We need to engage the people to help to improve our total performance including safety and reducing the number of incidents and injuries. We need to understand and build upon the things that people are doing right. He shared many practical examples to illustrate this.

Ron Gantt spoke about the need to widen our gaze to see the complex interactions of everyday work so we can see opportunities for improvement and facilitation rather only violations. He talked about the importance of going into our organizations, being with the people and seeing how they really do their work and the challenges they face every day as they get the jobs done. It is important to close the gap between work-as-imagined and work-as-done.

Our Safety I habits are strong and it is not easy to move into a Safety II approach and sustain it. Safety I and Safety II are not in opposition to each other. Rather we need to take the best of the basic rules, procedures and skills of Safety I, and build the positive approach of Safety II into our way of working with the people at all levels in the organization so that everyone can be the best they can be.

Richard N. Knowles speaking at the safety conferenceI was given the opportunity to talk about my work on Partner-Centered Leadership and shared information about the Process Enneagram, which is such a powerful tool to help people to come together to solve their complex problems. Partner-Centered Leadership is focused on sharing information, building trust and interdependence, helping everyone see the importance of their work for the success of the whole enterprise and moving into a better future. Everyone at the workshop was seeking ways to actually move into Safety II and make it happen so there was a lot of interest in this work.

Tom McDaniel was gracious in commenting:

“Dick Knowles has the most effective process for understanding and measuring leadership and its advancement. His knowledge on this subject is outstanding. He brings clarity to what many are already doing in an ad hoc method but by seeing this relationship distinction, it can only help you and your organization move further along. I know he has written a couple of books on this. He has helped many organizations succeed.”

This Workshop was an exciting step into a brighter future for the people in our organizations. Many thanks to Tom McDaniel for having organized this workshop and bringing everyone together to share and learn.

Filed Under: Safety Leadership, Safety Leadership Process Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

It is all about “YOU”

January 14, 2019 By Leave a Comment

It is a new year. Businesses have compiled their 2018 safety statistics. They are looking at economics and at people. Who was hurt during this past year? What have we put in place so that those injuries won’t happen again? What are we talking about together for betterment? How did our systems contribute to our successes or to the injurie/s? What was the presence and the strength of Leadership support like around those people who were injured? Where are we most vulnerable safety-wise? How can we lead more effectively? How can we have an even safer workplace in this new year, 2019? How can we help employees to become more aware, more safety vigilant? And thus more able to return to their families at the end of the shift whole – with arms, legs, toes, fingers, eyes, ears – all intact. (Leaders, are you asking these questions?)

I don’t believe anyone wakes up in the morning and then upon entering the workplace plans on getting hurt that day. Nope. It doesn’t work that way. Rather, we go into work, we start our work, and our focus tends to wander from safety – inattentiveness – hurrying – trying to do two things at once – perhaps even emotionally upset at times. The result is that slips, falls, pinches, pinnings, caught between, run over, cuts, scrapes, and near-misses or worse scenarios come about. Somehow we drop the ball on being able integrate safety into the whole task from the initial safety reminders to the safety wrap-up at the end of the day. Even in-your-face safety signage doesn’t save the day.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Nope. Safety starts when YOU—the individual person takes a stand that YOU will work safe…all day. YOU will ask yourself where the biggest risks are and how you must prepare for them. YOU will watch out (as well), for your buddy and the newbie. YOU are an adult. YOU don’t want to have to wear a brace or a cast or bandage because of the pain and the inconvenience it’ll cause you. YOU don’t want to have to miss work or become a statistic. YOU will look out for booby-traps and surprises. YOU will be attentive to what is happening around you and with your specific task. YOU will be your own poster child for doing your work safely…because YOU want to…because it is the right thing to do, because YOU can think for yourself. YOU don’t need to have a safety prize for a reward, either. YOU decide to be safe…everyday, every moment, every task, constantly building on the good things you know and strengths you have. YOU make the decision!

Why am I beating this drum today for this newsletter? Because it is a clear aspect of Safety and Leadership. Until YOU can take a stand…a genuine stand…on YOUR own Safety, your head won’t be or stay in the game. And Leaders, Supervisors, Managers, CEO’s, you need to take your stand, too. Your stake has to be clearly and visibly in the ground. Your people need to know that you’ve taken your stance on safety and expect the same of them.

What does “taking a stand mean?” It means that not only will you publicly share that you recognize that YOU believe that working safely is important and something you must do, but you are, in addition, willing to ask all those you work with, to kindly hold you accountable to that stand. Will you do that? What’s your stand?

That’s the difference that makes the difference!

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: , , , , ,

Part 1: The Background on the Cruise Line International Association Conference

January 12, 2016 By Leave a Comment

On December 16-18, 2015, I was able to attend the Cruise Line International Association Safety Conference in Miami. The focus was on improving the safety culture and Bridge Resource Management. This is a very interesting business for me to learn about. I was there to give some perspective from the chemical industry.

This cruise line industry is doing a lot to keep improving their safety performance. Their safety challenges range from slips, trips and falls all the way to navigation, building effective teams on the bridge and crew communications challenges. Ken Koves from the Institute of Nuclear Power Operations spoke about safety culture from their perspective. The level of regulation in that industry is quite impressive. There is just no question about doing things safely, yet they still have their challenges.

I spoke about moving towards a stronger safety culture by sharing more information, building trust and helping people to see the importance of their work to the success of the whole effort. I showed the 35 attendees a slide about the layers of the safety process effort, which they found quite interesting. I also gave them some cards with tips that the officers at different levels could use to help them when they go out to talk with their people. These were seen as quite helpful as well.

The second day focused on training, bridge resource management and simulation so that the captains and their bridge officers could develop stronger skills relating to navigation, ship piloting and management skills.

There is some very sophisticated work being done with large simulators being used by several companies. There are also several institutes providing skills, refresher training and qualification for the officers. Their training loads are very heavy.

Two test pilots from Boeing spoke about their training and the use of simulators. Their simulators are so advanced that, after a month of simulator training, a person could fly an airplane even though they never had seen it before. The basic ideas about the way simulators help them are quite alike even though the differences between a single seat jet fighter and a cruise ship are huge.

Part 2 – Integrating this Learning into all Safety Leadership

There is a big need to be sure the managers of chemical plants are qualified so that their employees and neighboring communities do not suffer the consequences of chemical releases and spills. Many manufacturing businesses that do hazardous work, aside from chemical manufacturing, should heed this thinking too.

As I was listening to these talks, I got to thinking about my chemical industry experiences. When I was a DuPont Plant Manager 20 years ago, we were very strong in operating discipline and safety. Managers were carefully selected and a lot of attention was paid to doing safety and everything else right. Training and integrating safety into every task, every day, was paramount.

Over the years, since I retired in 1996, a lot has changed, with the terrific pressure on cost control and efficiency. The safety standards fell terribly and accidents occurred like the four LaPorte, Texas deaths that DuPont had in October, 2014. In reading the reports of that accident it was sad to see that standards had slipped so far that even their company fire truck broke down on the way to respond to the incident.

This isn’t just a DuPont problem. Many companies are being broken up and purchased by finance and fund managers who know nothing about manufacturing and the high standards that need to be met. Just look at the First Chemical Company spill in West Virginia, when their poorly maintained storage tanks failed, spilling chemicals into the Elk River near Charleston shutting down the city water system for weeks. The people who owned this facility had no idea about their safety responsibilities. Their tanks were leaking for some time, yet the owners ignored them; the size of the leaks increased over a considerable period of time, then the dikes finally failed.

I am beginning to think that the people who manage facilities using highly hazardous materials, like those on the TSCA list, should have some sort of licensing requirements to certify that they are qualified and that their companies know how to fulfill their safety responsibilities. Ship Masters have licenses and certifications. Nuclear plant people are certified. My barber has to have a license. Professional Engineers must be licensed.

While this may sound like just more red tape, I think it is time to open the conversation about this. Plants that handle chemicals like chlorine are hard to run, can fall into a backwater and not receive the attention and support they need – yet a big chlorine spill would be a disaster.

There are lots of questions related to getting this going, but we, as a society, need to address it. What are your thoughts? What areas in your specific business, (chemical or not), are such that being certain that your managers and owners know what they’re doing and have the required knowledge and demonstrated operating discipline, are paramount? Where do you need to put some marked attention in 2016?

Filed Under: Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: , ,

Safety Never Takes A Holiday…Not in Hunting Season Either!

November 18, 2015 By Leave a Comment

Safety Never Takes A Holiday…Not in Hunting Season Either!

In many places, the hunting season is underway or just beginning. This is always a time of change and hazard. Some years when I was a plant manager, we would have one or two serious hunting-related, off-job injuries – like falling from a tree stand or tripping over something and breaking a leg. There is a lot of change as people go into the woods and fields looking for game. Many have not done this for a while. Others may not be fully prepared for a sharp change in the weather where a heavy rain could come in or the temperatures drop below freezing and hypothermia becomes a worry. It is often dark and visibility is poor. I have read of hunters getting killed with their own weapon when they have tripped and accidentally shot themselves. Don’t load your gun until you are ready to use it.

There’s a certain excitement that pervades hunting season, especially with newbies to the sport, so hunting safety cautions and reminders are good to reinforce. Be especially careful and safety-instructive when you have hunting novices with you!

Safety never takes a holiday – not in hunting season either!

Checklists Really Can Save Lives!

BrochuresI have been talking about checklists in my previous newsletters and they can be useful as people go out hunting.

Consider this mental checklist:

  • What sorts of special hazards do you face when you go out into nature and experience the thrill of the season?
  • Are you alone?
  • Do you have a flashlight if necessary?
  • A compass?
  • A cell phone?
  • Do people know where you will be and when to expect you to return home again?
  • Is your equipment really ready to do what you need?
  • Are your weapons in excellent working order?

Too many questions????? My wife’s father died while he was doing what he loved – deer-hunting; but his heart was not strong enough for the exertion required in that terrain.

What about you? Are you healthy enough for the hunt? Do you have your emergency meds with you? Could you get help if you needed it?

Another change for many of you will be related to Thanksgiving and the travel to be with family. Here again checklists would be useful.

Consider this mental checklist:

  • Is the car in good condition and serviced properly?
  • For those up north, do you have a few blankets and emergency rations in case you get into a surprise storm?
  • Are your maps and plans well thought out for the routes and times of travel?
  • Are your tires in good shape?
  • Do you have your ice scraper?
  • Is your cell phone charged?

For the hunters and seasoned travelers, you probably have a pretty good fix on these things. However, in the hurry to get into the field and woods or get moving on your trip when people are anxious and a little uptight, it is easy to miss a critical thing. How many times in the past have you started out and remembered you left something important behind? A simple checklist, written or mental, could make a big, positive difference in your adventures! Remember, safety never takes a holiday!

Checklists in the Workplace

I recently read of a fatal accident where a man was killed while working on a lathe. It was properly shielded and okay for the normal conditions, but the unexpected happened. The part he was working on exploded apart under the high rotating speed when he engaged the cutter. The parts from the exploding piece went right through the shield and gave him terrible, fatal wounds.

As you get ready to start your jobs – talking together about being fully prepared – it is important to imagine the unimaginable. What unlikely thing can happen that can get one of you killed if things go in unexpected ways? For many of these unexpected events there are no safety procedures developed. They lurk just outside of the normal path of events for which we have plenty of rules.

We often discover these lurking tragedies by talking together and thinking out loud about things. This requires a culture where it is expected that you will talk together, listen carefully to what you are hearing, asking questions and being open to something new. Sometimes when two seemingly unrelated ideas come together new insights emerge that could reveal a potentially serious accident. Often when we are listening to comics, two seemingly unrelated ideas are put together can be really funny. Conversely, thinking of two, seemingly unrelated things or events could save a life.

Thinking about the unexpected can be a powerful thing. (Put that on your mental checklist!)

Backfilling: The Hazard of Temporary Workers

Another thing that can happen around hunting season and the holidays is the need to hire temporary people to backfill for those who are out. These people need extra care and attention, but things are often so busy that it is hard to give it to them. These people just don’t know the hazards.

I heard a story about a high school aged fellow who came into a box making plant as a temporary employee and was assigned to a box-making machine. He was told to push the red button and the cardboard would be fed into the machine, scored, cut, folded and glued, then the finished box would be ejected from the machine. They also told him that now and then the machine would jam so he would have to quickly crawl into it to pull the cardboard out. Over the next few weeks, he successfully pull out some jammed boxes, but one day he did not move quickly enough and got pinned in the machine. Fortunately his heavy sweater got caught in the machine, jammed it and saved his life. He did get a long cut in his leg. He was stuck in the machine for about 30 minutes before someone discovered him and got him out and to medical help.

This is a pretty extreme example, but it illustrates the point. Look out for the temporary employees and help them. They are people too!

Filed Under: Safety Excellence, Safety for Business, Safety Leadership Tagged With: , , ,
Next Page »