Book Content

An organizational safety culture requires a multi-disciplinary approach to improve the potential for ensuring a safe work environment.  Leadership can drive the perception of safety through a clear vision of what is to be done and provide focus on common goals to achieve the desired organizational climate for safety.

The method entails implementing an array of activities ranging from selecting a safety management system, measuring human error performance, improving multi-level communications, risk, and loss analysis, and monitoring regulatory compliance to name just a few areas.

Appendix

1. Safety Examples of Duties and Responsibilities
2. Suggested Job Gap Analysis and Interaction Form
3. Safety Professional Perception Inventory
4. Basic Overview of Surviving the First Days in a New Job Assignment

Understanding the culture of an organization increases the potential for the effective development of a safety management system.  Organizational cultures develop under different conditions, and this history creates a unique style and personality.   These characteristics need different approaches to be used when deploying and sustaining a safety management system.

An organization, whether public or private, large, or small, is constantly adjusting to its environment to meet internal and external pressures and demands.  To understand an organization’s safety culture, defining how the safety management system is to work within this environment of constant change is the first step. 

Appendix

1. Safety Culture Traits and Indicators
2. Do you Know Your Safety Culture
3. DOE Columbia Quote

The importance of organizational networking in the developing a positive safety culture cannot be overstated. Organizations are a complex web of personal and professional networks. Networks establish how information is sent and received from the safety culture and the organizational environment. The safety leader uses gathered information to guide the SMS to best match the needs of the organization.

In this chapter, the importance of defining both personal and professional networks for the development of a safety culture is discussed. Concepts for assessing communications through network mapping will identify how information flows to the leadership team and throughout the organization

A function of leadership is to establish a planning process to be used for improving the designated safety management system (SMS). The planning process should be designed or selected to best match the general culture of an organization. A planning process should define the SMS goals and objectives, schedule specific activities around daily, weekly, monthly and in some cases, multi-year planning. Short and long-range planning provides the strategic benchmarks required to ensure the SMS is operating as designed.

A Safety Management System is a structured approach for managing and administrating the various components required to identify and control potential operational hazards and associated risk.  A Safety Management System provides guidance for planning, managing and establishing the appropriate controls needed for its work environment, a term used to refer to a comprehensive business management system designed to manage safety elements in the workplace.
If a safety management system structure is used, decisions on potential hazards and associated risk assessments controls can be given the correct priority needed to ensure the organization and all employees are protected.

Appendix

• Prevention through Design Program

Developing and managing a system requires shifting from the thinking as described by the above Mark Twain quote to having an understanding how to understand how the system fits together and how each of its elements impacts and relates to each other as described by the Deming quote. Most generic safety programs heavily rely on techniques used in the beginning era of modern manufacturing. Fredrick Taylor developed his “Scientific Management” concepts which became the foundation for much of what is still used as problem-solving techniques.

Appendix

• Selected Process Tools to help Enhance the Safety System
• Safety Culture Act
• Comparison of Safety Management Systems Process Elements
• OSHA Recommended Practices for Safety & Health Programs in General Industry
• OSHA Recommended Practices for Safety & Health Programs in Construction
• Sample Action Planning Form
• Sample Checklist on How to Change A Tire On A Car

Safety responsibilities require alternating between being a leader and being a manager. Management skills are necessary when implementing a Safety Management System criteria. Managers use “reductionist” approach to break problems into their basic elements for analysis and the developing of solutions. Leadership is needed to communicate the vision and mission of the SMS. Leaders inspire employees on what is expected of them for attaining and sustaining the safety culture. Leaders take a system or holistic approach and look for how all parts of the organization must work together.

Safety professionals must have a basic understanding of leadership principles and apply them when organizing and communicating with leadership and employees on activities needed to maintain a safety culture. Leadership skills are not genetic or inherited and can be learned. Leadership qualities are essential for developing teams, committees, and rapport with groups and individuals.

Appendix

• Safety Responsibilities Worksheet
• Sample Responsibilities for The Leadership Team
• Sample Responsibilities Plant Site Superintendents Managers
• Sample Responsibilities Supervisors
• Sample Responsibilities Employees

Safety leaders do not have to resolve safety management system or culture issues in isolation from the rest of the organization. A core element of an effective safety culture is the employee involvement in the safety management system. When engaged, experienced employees can be indispensable problem-solvers as they are closest to the real and potential hazards and associated risk.

Appendix

• Example of a Safety Committee Team Charter
• Best Practices for Workplace Safety Committees
• Developing an Effective Health and Safety Committee

An understanding of risk and its control must permeate the organization if an in-depth safety culture is to be sustained. The safety management system (SMS) must provide leadership with a full assessment and understanding of the organizational risk. An SMS using only inspections and observations to identify hazards will not provide a full appreciation of the potential for injury and damage if it does not link the results to potential operational and hazard risk.

As safety is an emergent property stemming from all aspects of an organization, without a constant focus on changes in the work environment, the probability of loss-producing events may have a way of increasing and slipping out of control. Too often the true scope of hazards and associated risk are only identified after a loss-producing event has occurred.

Risk management is an essential element of a strong safety culture. Safety management systems (SMS) such as ANSI Z10-2012 (“Occupational Health and Safety Systems,” 2012) have criteria recommending a risk assessment be completed as part of the overall analysis of an organization. The concepts of risk management should be considered an essential element of the leadership team’s operational decision making. In addition, all employees need a basic understanding of the terms risk, risk control, and risk management if the organization’s safety culture is to be sustained.

Safety Management Systems tress the need for a leadership team to regularly communicate and emphasize its safety vision, goals and objectives required to reduce operational risk and improve the work environment. However, this is a top-down, one-way direction of communication.

The Activity-Based Safety System (ABSS) provides a structure and framework useful in implementing and increasing the potential for two-way risk communications across an organization.

When ABSS is appropriately implemented, both leadership and employees have a way to communicate and discuss real or perceived risks or safety related issues. The increased potential for such a structured dialog provides a way to prioritize and better implement safety activities based on risk.

Appendix

1. Sample Accountability and Results Measurements
2. Sample Activity Based Safety System Duties
3. Summary of Activity-Based Safety System MetricsSample Daily Leadership Team Activity Report
4. Sample Daily Shift Review Discussion Review
5. Sample Weekly Summary Leadership Activity Report
6. Sample Daily Machine Equipment-Specific Checklist
7. Sample Incident Investigation Guideline
8. Injury Management Process

• Page 0, Sample Injury Management Checklist
• Page1, Sample Employee Acknowledgement of Reporting and Managing an injury.
• Page 2, Sample Employee Statement of First Report of an Injury
• Page 3, Sample Supervisor Initial Statement
• Page 4, Sample Medical Care Provider Letter
• Page 5, Sample Basic Job Description
• Page 6, Sample Transitional Duty Evaluation
• Page 7, Sample Travel Policy
• Page 8, Sample Preliminary Injury Alert
• Page 9, Sample Transitional Duty Program
• Page 10, Sample Transitional Duty Program Follow Up
• Page 11, Sample Witness Statement of Facts
• Page 12, Sample First Aid Log
• Page 13, Sample Employee Witness Statement
• Page 14, Sample Employee Interview
• Page 15, Ergonomics Awareness Checklist
• Page 16, Sample Injury Presentation

The primary reason organizations exist is to establish a structure for providing various products and services to customers. To meet their goals, management systems and networks are established. “Jobs” define individual activities, responsibilities, and authorities necessary for the completion of tasks to meet those goals. Job Hazard Analysis (JHA) is an essential tool used to assess operational hazards and risks linked to jobs within an organization’s activities.

The JHA is a vital part of the foundation for any successful safety management system. Hazard and Risk Control can only exist when leadership and employees have a full understanding of the types of hazards inherent in their jobs, steps, and tasks of required activities.

The authors view safety as an emerging organizational property resulting from the multitude of control interactions within an organization. By implementing a JHA process throughout an organization, the leadership team and employees gain an in-depth understanding of task-specific hazards and associated risks. Hazards and associated risks can only be identified and controlled through the use of an ongoing comprehensive assessment process.

Appendix

1. Sample JHA Pre-Hazard Assessment Worksheet
2. Example Annotated JHA for Changing a Tire
3. Knife Safety and Cut Resistant Gloves Procedure
4. Letter to Implement Knife Safety and Cut Resistant Glove Procedure
5. Sample Analysis of Self-Retractable Knives
6. Sample Knife Safety Training Documentation
7. Sample Analysis of Cut Resistant Gloves Selection Guide
8. PPE Assessment
9. Guidelines for Complying with PPE
10. Hazard Assessment  Option, 1 –
11. JHA Assessment Option 2 –
12. Example PPE Training
13. Example PPE Training Quiz

The safety culture and safety management system are supported by competent, comprehensive education and training. The culture of an organization has a powerful influence on employee norms, habits, and behaviors as they complete their daily assignments and tasks. The strength of the underlying unconscious perceptions, thoughts, beliefs, etc., of the organization, can override the best safety-related training designed to influence behavior.

Training may attempt to promote beliefs about the value and importance of safety, yet on leaving the training session, if nothing has changed in how work is managed, employees simply return to the behaviors driving the organization. The desired impact of training can only be sustained when the internal organizational constraints (time pressure, budgets, mandates, leadership skills, etc.) driving the culture are understood. Training would then be designed and structured to overcome or reduce these constraints.

Appendix

• Characteristics of Good Training Programs
• Training Requirements in OSHA Standards , OSHA 2254

A Safety Management System comprehensive assessment provides insights and validation about the current state of activities, their administration, and general effectiveness. The assessment of the Safety Management System, when routinely completed, reflects the real values and beliefs of the organization regards the actual safety culture. A structured and detailed assessment should provide details concerning potential gaps and opportunities for further improvement, not just in the Safety Management System but within the organization as well.

Appendix

• Safety AssessmentAttributes of a safety culture
• Safety Management Perception Questionnaire
• Safety Management System Review Example
• Safety Climate Assessment Tool (S-CAT)
• SHP_Audit_Tool

The desire for wanting information with urgency and immediacy is “now” the expected norm and no longer reserved for only special situations. The internet, cloud-based storage, and use of multiple types of devices have resulted in the availability of a “fire hose” level stream of information overwhelming researchers. This abundance of information and its continued expansion requires rethinking how data is collected, managed and stored.

Over the past several decades, emerging Internet-based technology and an array of new communications capacities, known as “Social Media,” became available and outrageously popular.  No one would have guessed these communication services would transform society where Social Media would provide a worldwide connected online conversation, supported by services such as Skype, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Reddit, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+, and countless others.

Appendix

• Social Media Tools for the Professional
• Using Feedly to Find  Content for Curation, a Case Study