The Secret Ingredient to Safety Excellence

By Doug Sterbenz

As a safety professional, your role is to develop, implement and oversee the safety programs within your company. You are also responsible for the most important thing in your company: the employees, along with their health and well-being.

You have a real impact on the quality of people’s lives. Think about it. At the end of the day, when everybody’s headlights are pointed toward the gate, what condition will they be headed home in? How will they feel? What will their attitudes be? You play a very important role in determining those outcomes. That makes you a very important person.

Embrace your role as a powerful leader by learning how to use the secret ingredient to achieve safety excellence.

Off the Shelf Safety Programs

There’s no shortage of ideas on how to improve safety culture. There are conferences dedicated to safety; books about best practices and other techniques to improve safety; and numerous companies that sell safety programs.

For many companies, a prepackaged or canned safety program is attractive. It sounds so simple. You buy the program. You teach the people in your organization to use said program. Maybe you bring in an outside trainer to help you implement it. Then, you sit back and hope it works.

Unfortunately, with these canned safety programs, it is difficult to establish ownership. Instead of your employees owning the new safety program, they become renters. People approach renting something differently than if they own it.

Think about the last time you rented a car. How many times did you hand wash and wax that rental car? Did you even clean out the car before you returned it? We can’t expect employees to approach safety programs that are foisted upon them any differently.

Canned safety programs are not inherently bad. In fact, there are many high quality canned safety programs and techniques available on the market. But without employee buy-in or ownership, your program will not achieve the results that you seek: zero accidents and injuries. Without ownership, your new safety program at best becomes the flavor of the week, at least until another crisis or executive’s pet project takes priority.

However, there is a way to approach safety that can lead to lasting improvements that can work for every organization. It is the key to achieving safety excellence and the glue that will hold all your safety efforts and existing safety programs together. This secret ingredient transforms workers from renters to owners of their safety culture.

Read more here.

More Safety News of Note:

• How to Prepare for OSHA’s New HazCom Final Rule
• 2024 Guide to Ergonomic Safety
• What's With the New Worker Walkaround Rule?

This newsletter was written and produced by Managing Editor Nicole Stempak. If you have any questions, suggestions or ideas, please add them in the comments below.

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