In the chapter introduction, we discussed what current safety profession- als, business owners, and front-line supervisors might say were their great- est lesson(s) learned about achieving safety success. Participants provided over 60 “greatest lessons learned,” which we have narrowed down to 12. Those surveyed included a cross-section of top safety professionals and company managers at safety successful companies.
Much has been written in the past 20 years about methods to improve workplace safety. Perhaps the greatest single lesson learned is that there are many ways to create successful workplace safety programs. Different com- panies, cultures, and management teams require different approaches to achieving safety success.
In addition to the formal survey, over the past two years, we have polled safety professionals, business owners, managers, supervisors, and employees at various levels, asking them to share their “greatest lessons learned” about protecting themselves and others from injury and illness.
Beyond setting up a core workplace safety program and practicing the basics of safety, this “greatest lessons” list identifies key statements and ideas that can lift workplace safety programs from average to excellent. A number of “lessons” may be absent from this list; we’ve done the best we can to cap- ture the data and the essence of those we polled. Of course, any such list is a project in constant review and analysis. The 12 lessons learned are:
1. Organizations are run by the cultural rules of the workplace. 2. The mere act of showing people that you’re concerned about them
usually spurs them on to better job performance and integrity. 3. Supervisors are the preferred source of information.
4. Keep intact the dynamic relationship that exists between employee and supervisor.
5. Say only things that are true and say them with total consistency. 6. Be comfortable with being a source of integrity, vision, and intu-
ition. Seek to be producers, not consumers of these rare commodities.8 7. Live the values of being a safe person, privately and publicly. 8. Never take the easy way out.
9. Take responsibility—especially for mistakes. 10. Teaching is at the core of leading.
11. Make and keep commitments to safety and health—your own and that of the people you are responsible for.
12. Have employees make a commitment to safety.
According to a number of safety professionals responding to the survey, these are their greatest lesson(s) learned about safety success:
Julie Gasper, Risk Manager and Safety Professional, McBride Electric
• Don’t assume that losses are a part of doing business, and help your employees to see this through education.
• Know your audience—not everyone buys in to the moral obligation approach to protect employees.
• Set the tone when new employees join—with a quality safety orien- tation program.
• View safety as a value, not a priority. • Don’t expect immediate results. • Safety success is a team effort.
Terry McSween, Ph.D., Founder and CEO of Quality Safety Edge, and author of The Values-Based Safety Process:
Improving Your Safety Culture With Behavior-Based Safety • Clearly define the role of management in supporting safety.
• Build accountability for those roles at every level of the organization. • Create systems that promote the active involvement and participa-
tion of all employees.
Allison Fowler, Biotech Safety Professional and Instructor
• Be patient and flexible.
• It’s about working with people and being respectful of their agendas and responsibilities.
• Be honest about your skills—ask for help. • Learn from your mistakes.
• Volunteer and give back to the community. • Stay in close contact with your networking group. • Teach and be active in industry-specific organizations. • Be humble and show respect.
Elise Fischer, Safety and Health Manager, Cox Communications, Orange County
• Listen.
• Give what others want first.
• Take every opportunity to put safety out there in a positive, proac- tive, and visible way.
• Don’t create a separate safety bureaucracy—pair safety with other ongoing events, and so forth.
• Use a reward system such that everyone can earn a reward, not just a few, and then keep it simple.
• Use a wellness approach to safety. • Express safety as a caring profession.
• Give everyone else the credit and say thank you constantly.
Tom Drake, President, The Drake Group
• Master the essential skills of safety leadership. • Practice integrity at all times.
• Communicate effectively. • View activities as processes.
Rick Pollock, President of Comprehensive Loss Management, Inc. and creator of Blueprints for Safety
• We’re dealing with well-meaning adults who want to do the right thing.
• You can never communicate enough.
• Safety is due to the state of mind of the individual—at the time of the occurrence.
• Multiple factors make up a good safety program. • Meaningful reward systems work.
Rick Sanchez, Safety and Health Professional and Consultant
• Learn from your mistakes.
• Have the courage to do the right thing.
Aubrey C. Daniels, Founder and Chairman of Aubrey Daniels International and author of Bringing out the Best in People and
Measure of a Leader, among other titles
• Don’t underestimate/undervalue positive reinforcement in the devel- opment of a safety culture.
• Behavioral technology properly understood and applied works to produce high-performance cultures.
Phyllis Simmons, Founder of Creative Safety Designs
• Managers must walk the talk—show that you care.
• Safety education, building employee relations, and leadership are the building blocks.
• Take care of your employees and safety will follow.
Summarizing a few other pertinent comments:
• Show genuine care and concern for the workforce—seek their well- being first.
• Safety is about the management of hazards.
• Quality of leadership defines the safety climate and organizational culture.
• Strategic leadership is the most important factor. • This is a people business—safety’s not just about rules.
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Epilogue
As we suggested at the beginning of this book, without business owners and management leading the safety charge, undertaking specific safety and health measures and the recognition that employees need to be involved in the workplace safety process at all times, the challenges will not abate.
We have attempted to attack those challenges in ways that are not complicated but can easily be embedded in your current business man- agement activities. And we hope that we have shown you ways to handle safety and ensure your company builds safety into its core values, mission, and goals.
We began with a discussion of workplace safety, why it’s important, and what the core competencies are to being successful. We covered the relationship of injuries and illnesses to regulatory mandates, financial management, as well as your short- and long-term business goals. And we surveyed top safety professionals and managers at successful compa- nies, learning from them their most treasured lessons about keeping peo- ple safe.
As practicing safety professionals, teachers, and business managers, we have learned many safety lessons over our combined years of experience. Foremost among them is that to achieve any workplace safety successes, a first step has to be taken. Whether an audit or best practices review, a foun- dation must be constructed and plans drafted. The more your safety efforts truly relate to what your employees do and the specific hazards they face, the better outcomes you will experience. We also have learned that safety
efforts are never a straight line; they are rather, a journey whose starting point you will visit more than once.
Each of us has a responsibility to make every effort to create a safe work- place for our employees, co-workers, and associates. We’re confident that with some effort, teamwork and critical thinking, your safety journey will be successful.
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Notes
Chapter 3
1. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Small Business Handbook, (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2005).
Chapter 4
1. Kate Montgomery, End Your Carpal Tunnel Pain Without Surgery (Boulder, CO: Sports Touch Publishing, 2004), and Anthony Carey, The Pain-Free Program (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2005).
2. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, “Musculoskeletal Disorders and Workplace Factors: A Critical Review of Epidemiological Evidence for Work-Related Musculoskeletal Disorders of the Neck, Upper Extremity, and Low Back,” July 1997. 3. NETS (Network of Employers for Traffic Safety), OSHA, and NHTSA (National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration) joint publication, “Guidelines for Employers to Reduce Motor Vehicle Crashes.”
4. ASIS International, Alexandria, VA 2003. 5. http://travel.state.gov/travel.
6. Bruce Hoffman, Inside Terrorism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).
Chapter 5
1. Knight, Rory F. and Deborah Petty, “The Impact of Catastrophes on Shareholder Value”, The Oxford Executive Research Briefings, Oxford University, 1996.
2. Hopwood, Daniel G. and Bob McAlister, “Business Continuity and Crisis Management: Initial Emergency Response Efforts Are The Key To Success,” The San Diego Daily Transcript, November 13, 2001, Vol. 16, No. 227
3. Hopwood, Daniel G. and Bob McAlister, “Business Continuity and Crisis Management: Crisis Management and Communications as the Bridge to Recovery,” The San Diego Daily Transcript, November 20, 2001, Vol. 16, No. 237.
4. See http://training.fema.gov/EMIweb for additional information.
5. George Head and Stephen Horn, Essentials of Risk Management, vol. 1 (Malvern, PA: Insurance Institutes of America, 1997).
6. Ibid. 7. Ibid.
Chapter 6
1. Intracorp, A Study of Injured Workers and Their Experiences with the Workers’ Compensation System, (Philadelphia, PA: 1997).
2. The Hartford Financial Services Group, The High Cost of Delays: Findings on a Lag-Time Study, (Hartford, CT: 2000).
3. Juliann Sum, Esq., M.S. in consultation with Laura Stock, M.P.H., Navigating the California Workers’ Compensation System: The Injured Worker’s Experience An Evaluation of Services to Inform and Assist Injured Workers in California, (Berkeley, CA: Prepared for the Commission on Health and Safety and Workers’ Compensation, By the Labor Occupational Health Program, University of California at Berkeley 1996).
4. Camille Currier & Steve Thompson, A Shareholder Solution to Workers’ Compensation in California, (Leading Companies Online Magazine, July 2005, La Jolla, CA: Beyster Institute, web link: http://www.beysterinstitute.org/includes/cf bin/output/article_slot_view.cfm?ID =670726).
5. Ibid. 6. Ibid.
7. ConAPA, www.conapa.net.
8. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Healthy People 2010, (Hyattsville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, National Center for Health Statistics 2000, www.cdc.gov).
Chapter 7
1. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Safety and Health Management Systems eTool, Module 4, Fact Sheets: Creating a Safety Culture, (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2005).
2. Ibid.
3. Leadership—the Driver for Safety and Health, Safety and Health Programs Assistance Training: Achieving Excellence. University of Alabama, March 10, 1996.
4. See note 1. 5. See note 3.
6. Camille Currier & Steve Thompson, A Shareholder Solution to Workers’ Compensation in California, (Leading Companies Online Magazine, July 2005, La Jolla, CA: Beyster Institute, web link: http://www.beysterinstitute.org/includes/cf bin/output/article_slot _view.cfm?ID=670726).
7. See note 1.
8. Gay Hendricks, Ph.D & Kate Ludeman, Ph.D, The Corporate Mystic: A Guidebook for Visionaries with Their Feet on the Ground, (Bantam Books, NY, 1996).
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