Philosophy
Several reasons for having a robust safety program are:
- Protects the company’s most valuable asset, its employees.
- Eliminates unexpected interruptions in the work process, allowing for more accurate scheduling.
- Reduces insurance costs, thereby making the company more competitive.
- Makes the work force feel more confident and secure, improving quality and productivity.
- Reduces unnecessary legal and financial burdens, improving the company image among potential and current customers.
Several reasons for having a People-Based Safety program are:
- Promotes an “actively caring” safety culture that encourages self-directed, “want to” engagement with regard to safety as opposed to other-directed, “have to” compliance with it. Develops a culture of interdependence.
- Focuses on leading indicators which promotes an optimistic attitude of striving for success as opposed to the failure-avoidance culture of a focus on trailing indicators.
- Promotes “fact finding” not “fault finding”. Most behaviors are the result of the system, not the cause of the problem.
- Helps first-line supervisors to be safety coaches by encouraging them to focus on positive safety activities such as pre-task planning, toolbox talks, and encouraging positive feedback.
- Celebrates safety achievements, but focuses on the process.
- All programs reviewed annually, or more frequently, for areas of deficiency, to identify possibilities for proactive improvements.
- Additionally, any areas of discrepancy between the policy and state, federal, or customer requirements, the most stringent will be enforced.
- A Safety Program success is based on the ability to perform safely, on time and within budget.
