Are Safety Professionals Becoming Robots?

An industrial company with an outstanding corporate safety record held a meeting of all of their safety personnel at a conference facility. They had been meeting for four hours already by the time I took to the stage. When I stepped upon the stage, my first view of the stage was a mess of loose extension cords, strewn VGA cables for the projector, cables running around the legs of the large video screen and unsecured cables running from the stage to the A/V cart four feet back of the stage. Not a single cable was taped down. I refused to speak until the mess had been cleared.

Had this been a job site, someone would have been reprimanded for blatant violations of basic safety procedure. Heaven help them had an OH&S inspector showed up. But this was a conference facility set up by the facility staff and apparently safety only applies to one's own workplace.

Forty-six safety "professionals" were in this room and no one noticed at least 100 feet of loose cable running across the floor? Was this a case of "not my job - not my responsibility?"

So here is the question: are repetitive Safety Procedures creating a workforce that doesn't think anymore? Are Safety Professionals becoming robots? Has "routine" and repetitive behavior closed our eyes to safety outside of the job? The evidence this day would suggest "yes!"


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