Safety – the new driver for business success

While many companies rightly pay attention to safety, it is often perceived as a burden to be managed. It’s something they must do but often the feeling is that it doesn’t add much to the bottom line.???

When safety is discussed, or when suggestions are made to improve it, the business case often rests on maintaining compliance and reducing accidents or incidents while minimising cost. Through this lens, safety management is about “avoiding bad things happening”.?

It’s time to look at safety as a business value ?

It’s a short-sighted view. By only seeing safety as something that needs to be tightly controlled to counter spiralling costs, businesses could well be missing out on a significant opportunity.?

What’s the alternative? Here are two ways in which good safety management is a potential driver for business success.??

1) Focus on strong operations?

Safe operations mean companies are operating effectively, and effective operations is the route to value creation. When you start thinking like this, the role of safety is less about preventing bad things happening, and more about how operating safely contributes to value creation by being part of strong operational performance.??

What makes strong operations? Consistency, reliability and predictability, whether in the flow of activity or the quality of output. Businesses need to identify and mitigate sources of disruption, respond quickly and decisively to any incidents, and learn from mistakes to create a culture of continuous improvement.???

Good safety management follows exactly these practices, and in doing so it reinforces the other elements of the operational ecosystem.???

2) Driving engagement and productivity?

Of course, the concept of continuous improvement is a good management phrase, the kind businesses like to use as an example of the sort of company culture they want to have. But it can be easy to aspire to and hard to achieve.? How do you identify the improvements to be made and how do you ensure they are made??

By talking to your employees.?

It is well known that engaged employees are more productive. But this is not only because they are more committed; it is also because they are more likely to share their insights on how to operate better.??

Safety, and feeling safe, is an underappreciated but hugely important part of this. It is a great topic for employee engagement. It demonstrates caring and helps generate ideas – both about safety and also other operational improvements.?

It’s a virtuous cycle. Businesses show they have employee safety front of mind by actively discussing ways to improve operational safety; employees feel more engaged, and therefore provide greater insights into what could be improved; business gets the benefits in operational efficiency and productivity.??

Changing perspectives on safety?

Ultimately, every person has a right to work in a safe and fulfilling environment. For most companies, it is a responsibility they take seriously, but one they see mainly as a cost. It’s time to stop thinking of managing safety like that. Instead, we all need to see it as a way of adding value that can help drive great business performance.??

Or, to put it another way, have you ever seen a business with good safety management but poor operational performance? Exactly.?