Management's Role In Safety

If top managers are not on board, health and safety will compete against core business issues, such as production and profitability.

In my experience, when safety has to compete with business interests, it usually ends up taking a back seat until an incident gets everyone’s attention. This is why it is imperative to get senior management involved in the safety culture of the company. The honest question is: How do you do it without sounding like you are telling senior management what to do?

It is important to note that I have never run into management that did not want to be involved in the safety culture of their company. Most often, it is that management doesn’t know how to do so.

Whether you are in safety leadership, operational leadership, or senior management, you have a part to play. I have found that just like in production, management has to know three things:

• Their role in safety.

• How to stay involved.

• The costs of optimal safety practices.

Senior Management’s Role

The role of senior management in safety starts with clear communication of their commitment to the safety of the employees and company. This can be worded and disseminated in different ways, but everyone must know of the desire to keep people safe.

Senior management also has the role of empowering safety leadership. Giving safety leadership a voice in newsletters and bulletin boards is nice, but giving safety leadership a seat in company leadership meetings gives a lot more weight to the statement that safety is important to senior management.

Another role of management is to ensure employees are trained. This must go beyond new-hire training. It must be a continuous process of training and retraining as necessary or required. It also has to go beyond surface-level training; it must be training that is taught, demonstrated, and tested.

Lastly, senior management must be able to spend the money on the appropriate equipment and resources needed to do the job safely.

Giving safety leadership a voice in newsletters and bulletin boards is nice, but giving safety leadership a seat in company leadership meetings gives a lot more weight to the statement that safety is important to senior management.

Senior management’s continuous involvement is crucial to ensure that safety is taken seriously and that it has merit equal to productivity. Senior management has to stay involved and must be kept informed on the good and bad. Management must know where the issues are or where there might be gaps or risks. This allows them to adjust or spend resources to address the problem.

It is equally important to know where the team is making great improvements or succeeding so that the progress can be recognized. Senior management also must be involved in developing the solution for problems or needs for training. So often I have seen management being taken out of this step. Mainly because it is often misperceived that they don’t want to be involved. Getting senior management actively planning and implementing helps them have a firm grasp on what is needed by their employees.

Senior management’s continuous involvement is crucial to ensure that safety is taken seriously and that it has merit equal to productivity.

The Cost of Safety

The cost of sustaining a healthy safety culture is lower than the cost of not doing so. This can be explained by considering the savings of injuries, accidents, legal fees, and costs of downtime. The cost of accidents (both indirect and direct) to the organization in terms of dollars can be a compelling reason for senior management to adopt change.

However, a healthy safety culture has other financial influences on the profitability of a company as well. Having a healthy safety culture allows employees to feel safe and valued. Seeing evidence of management investing in the safety culture of the company creates a connection to senior management. This correlates to higher production, less turnover, and better job satisfaction. These three factors always result in improved operational performance.

A company with a strong, positive safety culture will experience fewer at-risk behaviors and, as a consequence, also experience low injury rates, low turnover, low absenteeism, and high productivity.

Safety comes first. Getting both employees and senior management on board with safety helps to foster and create a safer and healthier work environment.

Dean Alling is director of safety and special projects for Attebury Grain, LLC, Amarillo, TX (dalling@atteburygrain.com/720-328-7011).