Safety Management System

The question is:

Is risk-taking acceptable? In many cases, one tends to justify some level of risk without thinking about the consequences.

This is a very important question that all leadership team members need to ask themselves.

Even the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) with their volumes of standards and regulations recognize that physical compliance with safety standards alone will not completely eliminate injuries.

If you think about it, it would be an impossible task for OSHA to attempt to write a regulation to address every possible potential hazard in the workplace.

These document out  are a good practice handbook that provides a set of practical methods and techniques for anticipating,

preventing, and catching active human errors; and, more importantly, identifying and mitigating latent errors attributable to organizational factors.   

One of the long-held perceptions that must be overcome in an organization is the belief that the elements of a Safety Management System are permanent in their design and implementation.
The intended purpose of the Safety Management System is to incorporate fundamental safety principles into the organization.

Even though it may not be obvious at this point in time, the important point to remember is that by holding this position you are part of the leadership team. This is an opportunity in becoming a leader with assisting with building a safety process that identifies and implements controls to reduce hazards and associated risk.

Depending on the size and scope of the organization, you, as a safety professional may be tasked with a wide range of responsibilities, wearing many hats. This is why in many cases that the safety profession can be considered as the crossroads of all that happens within an organization. Based on this you need to consider developing some multi-disciplinary skills which will enhance you responsibilities. And in turn will help you close the gap and allow you better communicate the needs of the specific organizational culture and how it can be developed with the leadership team.

One must remember that as new managers, supervisors, new employees, technology, other projects and priorities move into the operation from all directions, the safety effort will remain in a perpetual startup mode, “reinventing the wheel” as the changes evolve.

As the Safety Management system is being developed, employees will acquire some new skills and experience. As a result you should start to see changes and shifts in specific behaviors.

Therefore, in the beginning stage of developing a safety system the ultimate goal is to start to develop a level of individual accountability for all levels of the organization.

The assumption is made that everyone understands the definition of “safety.” The problem is that everyone defines safety differently.

Although this is just one word and may sound very simple it is still being debated as to a clear concise definition. If an organization is working with multiple definitions or vague concepts, then the potential for improving the safety culture is not clear.

In order to align a suitable definition of safety with an emphasis toward hazard and associated risk, William Montante, a colleague and risk control consultant, suggest that safety be defined more in terms of hazard control: “Replace the traditional mantras of “Safety first,” “Think safety,” “Safety is your responsibility,” etc. Strive for the personal and organizational mastery where each “hazard control manager”can state with confidence and certainty that s/he intimately understand safety and how s/he and the company manage control.”

In many organizations, the image of the safety professional is a person who goes through the workplace looking for things that are wrong, can only quote regulations, and usually offers little or no solutions to solve any regulatory issue, the use of personal protective equipment (PPE) and training/re-training to solve an issue. `Usually PPE and training/re-training is linked to promoting safety awareness, as the thinking is that PPE and training will solve everything.

Part of defining your personal brand is to look at your mental model. A mental models is considered the “images, assumptions, and stories which we carry in our minds of ourselves, other people, institutions, and every aspect of our world.”

To help maintain some level of support for the Safety Management System, a key step in becoming a successful safety professional is to determine if you are speaking the same business language as your organization. You need to determine how to best present your case so that hazards and associated risk are defined using the same language and terminology as used by the organization. In particular your leadership.

I once heard someone state that “Safety culture is a tough nut to crack.” As I thought about this statement for a few seconds I realized that Safety efforts are no difference than that of any normal organizational activity.

The Leadership team has to address the needs of multiple problems and resolve issues with the hope that the right decision(s) are selected based on the problems that needs to be addressed.

The potential for maintaining a strong safety culture increases if it is based on a positive perception that is woven into the fabric of the organization.

The term curation is used to describe research, organizing, and maintaining of all types of information and can be defined as “The act of curating, of organizing and maintaining of a collection of artworks or artifacts” (“Curation,” n.d.)

In your role, you must provide quality information that can flow among internal and external contacts. It is my belief that one must not be just a “gofer” or assuming responsibility for all aspects of the Safety Management System. This requires a continuous effort to ensure information is current, accurate, and constantly updated through open and rapid communication.

Traditionally, safety is on the list of many other things that we, as individuals, want to accomplish. The problem is that we tend to think about safety as a priority on our to do list and not as a value concept.

Will the methods that I will be discussing work for you? As with any effort that introduces concepts that might be useful, as a professional, you need to take by discussion point and thoughts and adapt them for your own professional life, organization and work environment.

I am Interested in your feedback on enhancing this course or other courses that I am considering developing.

It is important to note that we are in this course to work together and learn from each other.

During my research, Idiscovered that the Safety Professional is a critical part of the leadership team and not just an individual contributor. I also discovered that safety efforts would be more effective if he communicated with the leadership more frequently.

In 2009, I decided that I would channel my efforts to better understand the role of how social media could be used to enhance my productivity. I quickly learned that the world is changing all around us with a fire hose of information to be understood and I wanted to share what I learned with everyone.

With mynew knowledge, I have had to learn how to adapt to the current technology and how it is changing the landscape of who we are and the way that we act and conduct business.