Is your safety program addressing responsibility, accountability, leadership and values?
Why not? I mean, come on, you look for these traits when you hire someone don't you? What do you look for on a resume? Accountability, responsibility, leadership (personal), initiative, values and history. The very things that you choose to hire someone on are the very things that are absent from your safety program.
If they are not important enough to address in your safety program then why don't you just hire based on the employee's past safety record? Why do you need a model employee when you could just have some safety cowboy who has somehow managed to remain unscathed over his lifetime of safety infractions? No, you want responsible people who are able to think outside of themselves. But you don't train them in how to do that do you?
You say you want your employees to watch out for each other and to take responsibility for keeping the job site safe. You want your employees to be accountable when they mess up as well as when they act proactively. You want your people to be present on the job so that they can provide for their families. You want all of these things from a good employee and yet you leave the soft-skills training right out of your safety program. Well that's not a safety and wellness program then - it's a compliance program.
Maybe you just want your people to blindly follow the rules. Maybe you just don't trust them enough to be able to think on their own - and I'm sure we've all worked with with one or two people like that but let's not penalize the whole crew because one or two have a hard time locating their backsides with both hands.
The problem is that the vast majority of safety programs were written in reaction to dumb things people have done on the job. Safety programs, by their very nature, are reactive. Incidents have happened in the past and that's why there are now new rules and procedures. But is that how you want your safety and wellness program to work - constantly reacting to incidents?
A successful safety culture needs to be built - not just a safety program. A safety culture can only be erected on a foundation of responsibility, accountability, leadership and values. Once you've established the big four, then, and only then, can you build your successful safety and wellness program.
It may mean that you stop hiring the "accident-survivor-turned-safety-speaker" who can not clearly demonstrate their accountability, responsibility or leadership by their past actions. If your culture is one of "this could happen to you," then it probably will.
Be careful of the message that remains top-of-mind for your people. Talk about "leadership" and watch your people become leaders in safety. It's why I choose to work in building safety culture and safety attitude - not just safety programs.
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