Preface

Many managers and safety professionals consider a written policy as a solution to safety issues. Merely developing procedures does not set the stage for a safety culture. This takes many years of hard work to accomplish. In the development stage, you will see peaks and valleys (ups and downs) in your injuries. This is natural. You must be patient. It is important that you do not react hastily to each situation. If you feel that your process is working then you must learn to manage the process. To help you understand the importance of developing a safety management system, we have divided this book into four parts to help you understand the process.

PART 1: CHARACTERISTICS OF AN EFFECTIVE SAFETY CULTURE

Chapter 1: Does Management Commitment Make a Difference?

Most managers can give many good reasons for improving the way they manage their safety system, but many cannot tell you how to develop and enhance their safety management system. A well-designed management system can help to reduce incidents along with the associated hidden costs; increase efficiency; improve productivity, morale, and quality of products; and reduce the potential for regulatory citations.

This chapter will help you understand the related cost of an incident. We discuss several methods of cost reduction, showing you where some of the cost is, and the advantages of controlling cost.

Chapter 2: Defining a Value System

Some professionals in the safety field all but ignored the concept of safety culture through out the 1980s. As management attempted to improve culture through changing their styles of leadership and through employee participation, professional safety tended to change their approaches very little (possibly afraid of change). They were using the same elements in their safety “programs” that they had always used. Safety programs typically consisted of the usual items: meetings, inspections, incident investigations, and limited use of Job Hazard Analyses (JHAs). Most professionals perceived these tools as the essential elements of a safety program. Not many managers looked at the process as a management system.

According to Dan Petersen, “while OSHA and states’ programs were going down the ‘essential element’ track to safety (as was much of the safety profession), a number of research pieces began to come in with totally different answers to the safety problem. Most of the research results were consistent in saying ‘There are no essential elements’: what works in one organization will not in another. Each organization must determine for itself what will work for it. There are no magic pills. The answer seems to be clear: it is the culture of the organization that determines what will work in that organization.”

In this chapter we try to help you understand the difference between a priority and a value.

Chapter 3: OSHA’s Voluntary Guidelines for Safety Management

As you continue through this book, you will begin to understand why top management must be committed. This commitment must be strong so that a successful management system can be developed, continually improved, and sustained. The OSHA voluntary program that we discuss will be a good place to start. In addition, the voluntary program will provide you a specific perspective on management systems that is suitable for a successful management system.

PART 2: MANAGEMENT ASPECTS OF AN EFFECTIVE SAFETY CULTURE

Chapter 4: Managements Role in Developing an Effective Safety Culture

Too often safety and health program books talk only about the technical aspects of a safety and health program. Some books may include innovative or proactive techniques of incident prevention, while others focus purely on more basic, fundamental incident prevention techniques. One of the basic tenets of developing and ultimately sustaining a safety culture argues that an effective safety culture rests on the shoulders of the management team at an organization, regardless of the structure. Management, starting from the individuals with the most authority, all the way through to front-line management (supervisors, superintendents, leaders, etc.), then all the way to the employee, must be engaged in the effort to systematically reduce and/or eliminate exposure to hazardous situations. These situations encompass both exposures to physical hazards and work practices that put the employee at a greater risk of an injury.

In this chapter, we review a list of principal management leadership traits we have seen effectively utilized throughout our careers in various industries and work environments. For practical purposes, we will focus only on a few of the more apparently critical attributes we have observed, which have helped to maintain a keen focus on the impact of leadership and the safety culture’s management system.

Chapter 5: Journey to a Safety Culture: Determining the Direction of Your Management System

When you plan a trip, you and your family have an objective in mind for making the journey. You make extensive plans to make sure that you are going in the right direction by mapping out your destination. When planning and developing a safety and health program, you must also make sure that your objective for establishing such a program is crystal clear. The first step is to decide how successful you want your program to be and what you want your program to accomplish. The next step is to put your plan in writing. Once you have completed these steps, you can then map out the path toward your established goals and objectives. This is the method used to determine the direction of your program when developing your policy, goals, and objectives.

In this chapter we will help you begin your journey by detailing how to write and communicate your safety and health policy to your employees. In addition, this chapter will help you understand how to establish and evaluate your goals and objectives.

Chapter 6: Management Leadership: Demonstrating Commitment

According to Dan Petersen, safety results require support and behaviors from the entire organization, especially top management. But although commitment starts with top management, it is necessary to get employees to participate to make the management system work. It is important that this process be driven down to the employee level to be successful. Employees are one of the keys to a successful process and must not be forgotten. This is an indicator of the perception of how well the organization is working to create a safe work environment.

Protecting employees from hazards takes top management commitment. This commitment is essential and must be clearly demonstrated.

In this chapter, we will describe ways to provide visible leadership. Ideally, this means participation in a process that demonstrates concern for every aspect of the safety of all employees throughout the organization. In addition, we have included a description of a management system to make sure that contract employees are both protected from hazards and prevented from endangering employees of the owner-company.

Chapter 7: Employee Participation

The success of any business depends on all employees who work in an organization. Protecting employees from hazards on the job not only makes good business sense, but in all cases is the right thing to do. As part of management, you do not have to face this task alone. In this chapter, we outline how employee participation can strengthen your management system and safety program. We provide several case histories for your review.

In addition, we take a look at some of the reasons behind this employee participation and some of the ways you can implement a successful employee-driven program.

Chapter 8: Assigning Safety Responsibilities

Management is the function responsible for establishing the purpose of an operation, determining measurable objectives, and taking the actions necessary to accomplish those objectives.

As a member of management (no matter the environment, large or small), you must understand the importance of assuming accountability for the safety of employees. This could be new employees, transferred employees, contractors (including temporary employees), etc. To be successful you must assign this accountability to someone else in the organization. It is important to understand the difference between assigning responsibilities and delegating responsibilities. You cannot delegate your responsibilities. However, if you assign your responsibilities you will still have control. What you can do is to expect other individuals in the organization to share the responsibility for certain elements of the safety program. Many managers question why they should be assigned the responsibility for safety. In most cases, you have a working knowledge of your business issues and you should be close to your employees. However, as a business grows and the numbers of employees increase, being responsible for all of the details of an effective safety management system may become less feasible. It is important to understand how to have a management system in place for assigning some of the safety responsibilities to others.

In this chapter, we discuss ways to assign the required responsibilities to the appropriate individuals.

Chapter 9: Developing Accountability

Why is it important to develop an accountability management system? Imagine a sports organization with a coach (manager) and players (employees, contractors, temporary employees). Each player is assigned specific tasks and responsibilities that are critical to the success of the team.

In this chapter, we will help...