Why Your Hotel Room Safe Is Not Safe

When The Crap Hits

Following a cattle-hauler is stressful enough (been hit more than once by a gooey brown substance that slips off the truck in the wind). But following this particular cattle-hauler was a little more stressful: weaving side to side in and out of his lane and traveling well below the posted speed.

Once we saw an opening we went past only to find the driver reading some sort of manual while he was driving. The company name was written across the side of the truck and the unit number on the front fender. But it didn't end there. While we drove in front of the truck, a large dog began to make its way out onto the highway. I swerved and was able to avoid missing the dog. The truck driver, seemingly unaware of the dog's presence on the road, hit the dog squarely at highway speed and kept driving as though oblivious to what had just happened.

My wife looked up the number on the iPad and we placed a call to the trucking company owner.

Does your workplace have a policy to handle a call like I made? Do you do an investigation? Do you have a zero tolerance policy on distracted driving? Are you prepared to fire an employee who so cavalierly displays little attention to his work?

If you want to build a safer workplace, you take a tough stance on flagrant safety violations. Zero tolerance. Take no crap. Enforce it hard. No exceptions. The rest of your employees will get the message and you will be protecting lives - human and animal. There are NO excuses for being distracted while driving, ever.


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Kevin Burns - Workplace Expert and Speaker

Including Online Safety Builds Better Safety Culture

Sometimes I don't understand how companies can separate physical worker safety and cyber-safety. Both involve employees. Both involve safety. But one is handled by OH&S and the other by IT - neither of which seems to have a clue about the other.

Safety is safety - whether it's online or in-person. Looking out for the well-being of your employees should take the wholistic approach - not the insular approach.

Building a safer workplace means addressing ALL things that relate to keeping your people safe. And if that means that sometimes one crosses over into the other, then you had better figure out who takes the lead.

Perhaps an overhaul of how you treat safety is in order. Maybe it's time to consider a company-wide Safety And Security Department - marrying OH&S and IT. Wouldn't it make more sense?

If you want your people to take an active role in protecting themselves while the are on the job, you must talk about safety in a wholistic way. Addressing how your workers conduct themselves on a job site but not how they conduct themselves online seems a bit short-sighted and very narrow-focused. Address all of it together and you build a stronger Culture of Safety Attitude.


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Senior Management Needs A Safety Wake-up

Safety conferences are not just for Safety Managers and EHS personnel. Safety conferences are where we should be seeing presidents, CEOs and senior management personnel who are NOT related directly to OHS in their workplaces.

And until non-EHS senior management takes an active role in safety and the adoption of cultures of safety, safety will never completely take hold in an organization.

Safety needs to be treated on the same level as finance, marketing and sales.

Senior management needs to stop treating the health and safety of their employees as an arm's-length after-thought. Senior managers need to get serious about creating cultures and mindsets of safety in their people, but more importantly, themselves.

If you as a senior manager won't make attending safety functions as paramount in your workplace, neither will your people. People will model the behavior of their leaders. And your people will continue to get hurt because, like you, they don't take safety seriously.


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The Safety Hypocrite

You put a helmet on your young daughter's head before she took that first solo bicycle ride.

You spent a fortune at the sporting goods store to make sure your son was protected well when he joined his first minor hockey team.

You bought that really good quality car-seat and secured it properly in the back seat before you brought your newborn home from the hospital.

And yet you exceed the speed limit on your way to work, make unsafe lane changes, don't regularly check your car lights, don't do walkarounds before you get into your vehicle and you complain about the new regulations on safety at work.

Hypocrite.

Safety apparently only applies to other people huh? You had better get your own mental house in order. What you say and what you do don't apparently line up. And there are a few young faces looking at you confused that you care about their safety but not your own.

Change your mind. Safety is an Attitude. Get it.


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Safety for Boots AND Suits

I'm seeing a lot of safety programs supposedly designed to protect workers - but mostly it only applies to workers who wear work boots - not so much the one who wear suits.

Look, safety is for everyone - Boots AND Suits.

If the rules don't apply to senior executives as well as front-line blue-collar staff, then what is the point of having a safety program at all?

This is not a discussion about wearing hard hats on worksites. I'm speaking about things like speeding, cell phone use behind the wheel and serious consequences for serious offenses like drinking and driving convictions. Safety is for everyone. And once the front-line workers see that senior executives MUST play by the same rules, then you stand a better chance of having full compliance and reduced risk on the job.

Safety is an attitude. It's the attitude you build a culture on. Not just safety in certain areas but the wholistic view of safety - safety for everyone on everything.

Does your safety program apply to senior execs and how they drive, text and live their lives outside of work or is it just for those workers who you think can't think for themselves while they are on shift?

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Kevin Burns - Workplace Expert and Speaker