The Safety Life Cycle Guide

When your business or company invests time, money and resources on a safety program, what is the end result you are expecting from your investment?  Maybe fewer accidents, less missed work hours, lower insurance premiums, all excellent buzz words but low hanging fruit.  Did you pay for the training so your employees can recite back, word for word the spoon fed safety lesson sheets they’ve been handed?   Memorization does not ensure comprehension? Understanding how or why it all works together, makes for a smarter and safer employee through observing, thinking and reacting.  

You want your employees extending their safety focus beyond the personal space they’re working in, in an outward motion in how they are interacting with the environment and any perceived hazards around them? An example is every year workers are accidentally electrocuted, because they did not bother to take a simple moment to look UP, if they did they would have noticed the electrical power line running overhead before raising a load or the light fixtures, or sprinkler heads to ensure a clear path. Same with driving a car, you don’t just focus on the car in front of you, you’re looking down the road and around you. THAT’S what YOU want from your employees, to be able to identify hazards and report them or give them the authority to remove them, you don’t need a supervisor to tell them. How do you find employees to achieve this level of awareness is not luck, it begins in your hiring practices and training. Now, with this in mind…

According to the dictionary, Safety is defined as, the condition of being protected from harm, danger, or risk. It is the practice of managing and reducing hazards to an acceptable level, allowing individuals, systems, and communities to function without the threat of damage, injury, or financial loss. Doesn’t that sound just like what any parent would do? That makes Safety a living, breathing thing full of care and empathy, that has its own natural life cycle.

Not only does safety have a living life cycle, experts say it has three distinct personalities!

• Physical Safety: Protection from bodily harm, accidents, or environmental threats, (PPE) – Personal protective equipment.
• Emotional Safety:  The freedom from psychological harm, enabling people to express themselves without fear of abuse, bullying, or extreme stress, (Work place or domestic violence).
• Financial Safety: The security of having reliable resources and protection against severe economic hardship or loss, (Insurance).
  • But I would argue that there is a fourth safety personality type:
• Peripheral safety. The ability to see hazards and unsafe acts outside the direct center of your person on the edge of your main focus. Can be achieved in conjunction with allowing employees to use critical thinking abilities, which goes back to your hiring and training.

Safety is often viewed through a black and white lens of strict rules and regulations, laden with punishment for not obeying those rules. However there are professionals in the industries and safety organizations who agree that true workplace safety requires active engagement from all involved. The main goal for true success should be less office based paperwork and more empowering workers on the shop floor and fostering a transparent, productive, safe culture.

Next week we explore the 5 stages of the life cycle of safety.

Care to share your thoughts.