Proactive Safety Means Tomorrow Begins Today!
Safety as a value on and off the job makes good safety and business sense. In many ways
as a plant organization, plant workers, and individually you receive the level of safety
performance that you demonstrate you want to achieve! Everyone wins by enhancing
safety as a value. Continuous safety performance improvement is a process. It takes
ongoing commitment and the proper level of effort of all employees. It is not achieved
and sustained over night. It takes working at it daily.
At the plant level it is very important for the plant general manager to be the primary
champion for setting the tone, safety example, standards, and ensuring compliance by
demonstrating that safety and health are a value within the plant organization. The
supervisors and team/crew leaders, and plant safety committee members also need to be
champions for establishing and maintaining the same. Leaders at all levels play an
important role in supporting the value of safety within the workplace culture. Although
management has the primary responsibility of maintaining a safe and healthful
workplace, safety really is a management and employee responsibility. Most risk is at
stake at the plant level, usually the vast majority of potential loss is incurred at those
sites. Every employee deserves to go home safe and sound at the end of each workday.
Corporate Safety & Health provides safety & health core elements (e.g. safety and health
procedures/rules), plus coach and support safety efforts of the plants. The plants
implement the programs. Responsibility and accountability is with the plants. That is
where accidents most occur.
Emphasis must be placed upon clear roles, responsibilities and accountabilities of
managers, supervisors, team/crew leaders and employees regarding compliance and
safety performance. It is also important to continue to develop an attitude of individual
(personal) responsibility for safety & health in the workplace. The right attitude and
behavior helps generate results of employees always working safely. It takes employee
involvement and buy-in, which develop through time in an effective program. It is a
process, not an event or short-term series of events. Elevating safety awareness through
effective job planning, job briefings, and employees looking out for themselves and each
other goes along way in continuing to foster a proactive safety/accident prevention
mindset among all employees.
The plant safety committee also plays an important role in fostering employee
involvement and buy-in related to safety. An effective committee also should be an
important part of plant safety communications loop and help elevate employee safety
awareness. They need to meet periodically on some regular basis with an establish
agenda. It needs to partner with plant leadership to support safety efforts.
The plant safety committee needs to be proactive and solution oriented. They should
identify and implement safety initiatives to support safety goals and ongoing safety
performance improvement. They should not circumvent the normal process of safety and
health issues being resolved or acted upon when prudent to do so right on the job on a
real time basis. On the job efforts of employees and their leaders are critical to everyone’s
safety during normal and abnormal operation of the plant. Hazard prevention and control
must be a value, with items prioritized for follow up and then closure.
Safety communication, safety and health procedures, safe work rules, job pre-planning,
job briefings, emergency preparedness and proactive safety initiatives need to continue to
be integrated in the way work gets accomplished. Supervisors and team leaders are an
excellent voice for communicating safety awareness issues, recognition, and corrective
action. Regulatory training (annual/periodic) helps to support compliance and employee
knowledge and skills related to safe work practices. Supervisors and team/crew leaders
need to continue to enforce and re-enforce those compliance requirements and safe
practices on the job. Otherwise knowledge and skills learned in the training environment
do not transfer into the workplace. They need to recognize good practices and correct
opportunities for improvement proactively.
Plant safety goals need to be established, measured and effectively communicated to
employees at all levels so that they understand ongoing performance results. After all,
what gets measured and communicated supports achievement. Goals need to be
meaningful, measurable, and achievable with stretch built into the goals to help foster
ongoing improvement.
Incidents need to continue to be adequately reviewed so that lessons learned are
identified, and then communicated to employees so that future similar incidents can be
prevented. Incident corrective measures performed in a timely fashion will support
accident prevention.
Periodic assessments and inspections need to be conducted and documented to support
compliance and identify good practices and the opportunities for improvement.
Appropriate corrective action must be taken related to non-compliant items and
opportunities for improvement. Follow through to closure is very important.
Regulatory required recordkeeping must continue to be established and maintained
effectively. This includes items such as but not limited to: OSHA Recordkeeping,
required equipment inspections, performance measurements, corrective and preventive
maintenance, and regulatory training records, etc.
The safety & health program approach needs to establish a new vision and help create a
bridge. This will be accomplished by developing and implementing a safety and health
process, which will support facilitating the plant safety culture from the current state to
the new desired culture. The cultural transition will help achieve the necessary results by
supporting changing needs and continuing to improve safety performance. Every
organization is uniquely designed to produce the results it achieves.
Safety is a journey, not a destination. It’s continuous improvement to achieve and sustain
top tier results, with employees going home safe and sound at the end of each workday.