Manufacturing and the use of machinery will never be too far removed from risk, since nature 
and the human element introduce an inescapable randomness that can lead to unforeseen results. Regardless of how hard companies try, accidents in manufacturing happen very often – and more often than not, it turns out that if the procedures established by the company had been followed, the disaster would have been averted. Nevertheless, the disaster does happen – and the inevitable fallout ensues. Why does this happen? Primarily because, companies adopt safety standards and not a “safety excellence strategy.”
The Thought Behind Current Safety Plans
Most safety standards and procedures are laid out by people who depend upon attempting to foresee as much as they can and dealing with all the possible eventualities. They then set down rules prohibiting that behavior that they perceive as being likely to lead to these ‘bad’ outcomes. They insist on believing that persistently broadcasting these rules from every possible avenue will mean that these bad outcomes will never result. They set up elaborate procedures on the operation of each and every aspect of their process. Believing that as long as people are reminded about these procedures and warned about the dangers of the outcomes, their feared outcomes will never result–failing to recognize that safety isn’t about setting up systems, but changing mindsets.
Human Nature and Safety Plans
It is an inevitable part of human nature to become inured to risk over time. Regardless of how often safety warnings are broadcast or seen by an employee, they will eventually become ignored. Further, employees will often rationalize with themselves that the risk of a specific event happening are so remote that they are unlikely to ever be hurt.
For the most part, they would be right. The circumstances and risk envisioned by the people setting up these safety strategies would generally be remote, given that these people are trying hard to deal with EVERY possible risk and error. In doing so, they open their employees up to finding ways to cut corners in the laborious process envisioned by people they believe have no experience or idea of their work. This boredom activated acceptance of risk is what causes most workers to not follow safety procedures absolutely, because they believe the chances of the event that is being avoided are so low that no discernible harm is likely to result. Moreover, the people designing these systems usually put in various levels of redundancies, which makes employees imagine that as long as the ‘other guys’ are doing their job, there’s no way anything bad can happen.
Unfortunately, given enough time and enough repetitions of the same process, chances are that many employees have departed from process, procedure and standards very substantially. In doing so, it takes only a specific instance for circumstances to be amenable and the disaster ends up being the end result. This will always be the end result while employees adopt safety standards. The solution to this is to go for the employees internalizing a safety excellence strategy.
What is a Safety Excellence Strategy?
Safety cannot be a process but a mindset – a level of alertness and wariness coupled with information and experience that they accept. This level of acceptance being gained is a result of many factors – culture, styles of leadership, economy, locations, history, etc. A company must engage with all of these factors and promulgate a strategic vision that adequately showcases to employees not only the role that safety plays in the affairs of the company, but also how they play a role in company safety for everyone. Creating such a scenario and inculcating a work culture that promotes safety as a part of a larger narrative of a corporate purpose is just one part of laying down the foundations for a safety excellence strategy.
Another part of creating a safety excellence strategy is focusing on not just safety data and figures, but determining the reasons behind it. If parts of the safety process are the sort that employees and workers repeatedly circumvent, pressure and monitoring might improve security compliance regulations. However, this will only be premised on the fear of being caught, and any indication that employees and workers might be able to get away with it will create the same problems all over again. Therefore, understanding the intentions and motivations of the employees as well as explaining to them why they must follow the procedures is essential. What is more essential, though, is ensuring that this is done not in the narrative of risk or safety, since the odds are often so low that the average worker wouldn’t pay much heed to those sorts of scenarios. On the other hand, explaining to an employee or worker how the safety excellence strategy is in consonance with the vision and values of the company helps massively in creating the required culture shift that acts against their human tendency to dismiss it.
