Misunderstanding Who “Creates Safety”

A fundamental challenge of selling a validated management methodology for risk into any enterprise is that almost universally there is a deep misunderstanding about who “creates safety.” The most basic mistake , believing that safety is more than a side-effect of management is a complex enough misunderstanding to overcome, but when combined with an ignorance about whose authority, responsibility and opportunity it is to engender the creation of safety, we see an almost intractable resistance to actually implementing an effective management model.

A frequent refrain heard in safety circles is that safety begins with the frontline workers, but the problem is that the statement is misdirected. It is entirely true that the actions of the frontline operational employees will dictate the safety of the workplace in a practical sense, but it is truer still that those employees will execute their workplace duties not based upon some grasp of an obscure set of rules and regulations, but within the context of the culture of the workplace. So, in essence, while safety results from their actions, their actions are predicated upon what they believe is acceptable within their workplace culture – or, put bluntly, safety expectations are dictated from the top.

If you want evidence of how unsafe workplaces are, and why, you can watch any episode of a half dozen or so “reality workplace programs.” A recent one about ice-bound oil fields racks up a half dozen life-threatening acts of faith in the first ten minutes or so of the initial episode, where we witness employees behaving in a cavalier fashion around machinery that could kill not only them, but their coworkers. While never asked to explain themselves in context of unsafe behaviours, the repeated queries throughout obviously are about the “hard drive” to “get it done.” These are invariably tied to productivity, though usually with appropriate pithy phrases. You never hear the words, “I am willing to risk myself and my coworkers doing something patently stupid on camera, because my employer condones this stupidity to reduce the cost of producing the end result.” No one would allow that past the editing booth, though translated that is always the fact being used to excuse foolish unsafe behaviour.

To adhere to the myth that “safety is created by frontline employees,” you would have to believe that not a single such worker has any interest in safety, surviving their workplace, or living long enough to see their children graduate pre-school. Since it is unlikely that such disregard for life and limb is somehow universal, it raises the question why then we see so much operational chaos? If the frontline is the safety generator, why is it so common to see behaviours that enhance risk so dramatically?

The reality is that the problem lies above the frontline employees.

One of the main challenges in safety groups is that the de facto ‘safety manager” is not a professional manager, of safety or otherwise. They are generally people who were promoted up into that position, often with a world of practical experience but with no training on how to manage. Consequent to that there are two failures evident in groups where that is true: the first is that the safety supervisor is generally focused within the frame of their personal experience, or, put in simpler terms, knows only the risks within the scope of the experience they gathered through their immediate past experience; and, in the second place, the group is reactive, because there is no management experience imparting an ability to manage scarce resources, plan effectively, or otherwise avoid crisis reaction becoming the principle stance. The reaction to this, a recognised problem, has of course created the opposite problem in some enterprises, where a safety supervisor with no actual workplace experience sits in an office doing paperwork with no contextual understanding of the scope or risk, its position within the company, or its true potential for exposure and injury.

Blaming the “safety manager” for the failure of safety systems is problematic when they are disarmed from the outset by a lack of appropriate professional standards, or a dearth of experience. The problem lies above this rank.

The problem is cultural because it is imposed from the highest management circle of any company. Based upon past cost performance, safety is often viewed as a productivity drain, largely because risk has never been managed at the operational level. What has happened in the past is that costs associated to “safety” rose out of proportion, always, because the resources were distributed reactively. Post-accident, for example, one might suddenly feel the need to refresh certain training, and because the pitch of fear about it is so high, the budget gets expended to achieve a refresher there, wipes out any planned management activities that might have enhanced safety, and drives the next accident. Any executive who sees this cycle from the outside-in blames the concept of “safety” for two reasons: first, they perceive what they do see from the group as busy work (piles of regulatory compliance paperwork with no essential internal value); and, second, they perceive repetitive cost overruns that produce no long-term benefits. It is no wonder they ignore the “safety” groups.

The buck actually does stop at the executive level, in all cases, but the problem is that even the most well-meaning executive is frequently facing such an obtuse mess when judging ‘safety” that they can hardly be blamed for devaluing what they see.

Safety extends from management activities not terribly different than those a good corporate accountant deploys to plan for operational matters. The problem is that safety has shot itself in the temple with such regularity, by adhering to practices that guarantee it is always in crisis mode, and so has never shown any ability to manage. Even clumsy attempts to manage end in costs that exceed measurable value, almost always, because the metrics matrix is unclear. A frightening ignorance about cause and effect cripples the ability to measure resources against results.

Safety is created when five realities exist for a company:

· Executive management rejects the idea that safety is a process, and understand it as an outcome of a management process;

· Executive management continuously demands better communications, and requires metrics that show value from the management process that imparts safety;

· Mid-level management grasps that operational productivity is directly tied to the same management processes that impart safety, and views these processes as integrally bound;

· Safety personnel recognise their experience is limited, seek frontline operational cooperation to understand risks of operations, and refocus their efforts on managing to avoid risk encounters or suppress outcomes of risk encounters; and

· Frontline workers recognise that controls (safety rules and policies, training, etc.) are being applied to mitigate real provable risks, know management recognises these controls enhance productivity, and feel comfortable contributing to the productive model by enforcing and enhancing controls actively.

An enormous amount of lip service is paid today to the idea of teamwork, and the sad reality is that teamwork is usually superficial, or, quite often, pure fantasy. And yet risk-management, which produces safety as a by-product of its application, is an example of when true teamwork counts.

In every organisation we have reviewed, we have found that real safety is generated not by a policy manual, but by engagement at all levels of management and operations. The engagement factor dictates productive enhancements, and makes it possible to manage risk rather than react to crisis conditions. The former prevents egregious failures, and the latter only creates the environment to produce continuous cycles of collapse.