The teams who did well in the World Cup went for
plenty of shots at the goal.
They were pro-activeby spending predominant time in their opponent’s half.
They were continuously
looking for opportunities to strike.
How does this pertain to safety?
Is your safety aimed at scoring goals by being pro-active,
or are your efforts mostly re-active, by defending your own goal?
Do you
spend most of your time and safety budget on ‘defending’ safety?
Is your main
focus not having any accidents and keeping your Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate (LIFR) in tact?
Are your
safety activities mainly centred on meetings, inspections, observations,
corrective actions, audits and legal compliance?
If this rings true for you, then
you are in the re-active mode.
These activities are necessary to comply
to the rules of the Departments of Labour and Minerals. Furthermore, incident
investigation and corrective action are fine, but they are also too late.
Pro-active safety efforts are
aimed at continuously improving the safety culture and working environment.
Do you have safety improvement plans in place and are they owned and driven by the line people?
Do you have a safety improvement budget?
Are you doing risk assessments and evaluating critical operations?
Are most of your incident reports
and investigations about examining near misses and close calls?
Are you
benchmarking best safety practices and implementing these in your own facilities?
Do you have ‘strikers’ in place – the experts who focus specifically on safety
improvements?
Do you measure the actions taken and projects completed to
improve safety, as opposed to corrective action?
Do you spend a sizable portion of your safety
budget on raising safety awareness, not only inside your factory / mine gate,
but also when people leave your premises and hit the roads as well as on home
safety.
Does safety really come first?
ACTION and measurable results is what is needed.
Analyse all your safety activities and determine which are re-active
and which are pro-active.
Look at your safety plans, meeting minutes,
audit reports and investigations, etc. If more than half of the items fall into
the re-active category, you are playing a defensive game in your own
half and chances are, that you will continue fighting a loosing battle.
Change
your focus and become pro-active, attacking safety with the emphasis on pro-activeACTION to put safety at the top of the mind of all your employees.
If you would like a
copy of my ACTION and HABITS posters, or if you need a
motivational speaker on safety, please email pa2JHT@iburst.co.zaor jurgen@anda.co.za
