What is World Class Safety?
It is going well above the minimum OSHA standards, many of which were written over 30 years ago. Don't even think about becoming best of the best if they use minimum standards or if you are still struggling just to be compliant with those standards. One of the most important factors in creating a world-class safety culture is for the leadership to embrace the idea that good safety is good business. Leadership is critical when transforming your safety program from good to best.
It generally takes somewhere between 3 - 5 years to get your Safety Management System integrated into the day to day operations to become a way of business. Safety starts at the very top of your organization and if you don't have the CEO/CFO absolute support and participation you will NEVER achieve success. By the same token, you employees are you most valuable asset and if you don't involve them and rely on their unique knowledge of the work, the hazards, and possible controls, in order to gain their support and participation, you will NEVER achieve success.
Creating and maintaining a world-class safety management program differs only slightly from other organized approaches to business management. It's just a lot tougher. A common denominator of successful companies, whatever the business, is that they have an organized approach to management. Safety management should be treated no differently. Too often a company's safety program amounts to doing the minimum prescribed by Occupational Safety Health Administration (OSHA) guidelines.
According to the National Safety Council, five characteristics help determine whether a safety management system is “world class”:
Leadership – The management of an organization must lead by example to help drive employee engagement.
Integrated systems approach – Integrating safety processes into all business functions and structures can result in safety becoming embedded in how an organization does business.
Performance measurement – Both leading and lagging indicators must be used to promote and monitor continuous improvement of the management system.
Alignment to core organizational initiatives – Through visioning, strategic planning and budgeting, safety can become aligned with all other objectives, strategies and values in an organization.
Corporate citizenship and off-the-job safety – Through initiatives, world- class organizations extend their safety efforts to both the community and employees outside of work.
Safety Leadership is a vital component of any Safety program but is a vital component if you're considering taking on the challenge of a Safety Management System.
We can help you with Safety Leadership to help drive the Safety Culture Change
Where to start
Generally, the first step in establishing a world-class safety program is to recognize the need to improve the current process. A company needs to determine and admit to its weaknesses.
Safety begins, and ends, with people, People make up the business and if you don't have good people, or if people are getting injured all the time, you don't stay in business very long.
As an organization, you need to develop a mindset that all employees are involved in safety and everyone is accountable for safety. It must be line driven. "There are no exceptions," you cannot just assign safety to the safety manager and go on about your business.
An on-the-job injury that results in the loss of time has the same impact on a business as a machine breakdown. Following the OSHA format of tracking recordable injuries or illness, is like measuring failure. It's counting something after the fact. A world-class safety program has to be able to head-off injury.
Author: Deborah Grow, Safety Compliance Specialist, Private Safety Consultant
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