The word "safety" should come with a warning - Use sparingly.......
Wayne Reilly
Executive leader and expert in critical risk management, assisting heavy industry to better understand and control critical risk, coaching Leaders in the field to build capability.
To brand things as "safe" or "unsafe" is judgemental and subjective. It often blinds people from the real factors at play and prevents them making objective observations of "what is" and "what is not".
Understand the workplace in terms of what are the energy interactions taking place, what are the controls for those interactions and how effective are they.
When you judge people, equipment, environment or process in terms of safe or unsafe, you can never truly understand what is known/not known; done/not done; present/absent; monitored/not monitored etc. To observe without judgement is the highest form of intelligence.
Is it not it time we got smarter with safety!
I would be interested in people's thoughts on this, especially if you are continually being pitched the behavioural/cultural based approaches that try to fix the worker not the work and tinkering with systems without addresing tangible risk.
Corporate Services support
9 年Hey Wayne. Interesting but what then is the smarter way? What is the advantage of observing without judgement? Someone without knowledge of an environment or equipment could observe without judgement but does that mean they'll be objective or just naive? And once technology and systems have been approached to fix the work and tangible risk, are we not to look at behavioural/culture based approaches? And finally isn't your judgement of needing to get smarter a good example of how being subjective can help make things better? There does need to be a shift in thinking and I'm still searching for it. Marty
HSEQ Systems Consultant
9 年Very insightful. The 'blame the operator' mentality is old and dangerous and sadly often risk assessments are more about the document than the content. I too look forward to the next shift in thinking in the area of people's wellbeing.
Executive leader and expert in critical risk management, assisting heavy industry to better understand and control critical risk, coaching Leaders in the field to build capability.
9 年It does feel that sometimes in construction and mining the focus is to get minor/temporary injury rates down, often loosing sight of the different measures need for permanent damage and fatal incidents. Taking care of one does not address the other, they are different phenomenon.
Business Leader | Investment Strategy | Investment Manager | Portfolio Management | Sustainable Investor | Client Engagement | Investor Communications | Mentoring | Risk Manager | Industry Influencer | Problem Solver
9 年I just like the sign!
Construction Safety
9 年Yep, agree. I think that behavior and culture have importance but are only pieces of the whole. Leadership, mentoring and training are equally important.