SAFETY PROCESS SYSTEMS (available in full paper).
Developing a superior safety culture is a comprehensive and complex process. In order to effectively manage its complexities, the safety process can be broken into 15 primary safety ystems, which consist of 5 Core Principles and 10 Key Elements. Understanding, measuring, and improving the 5 Core Principles and 10 Key Elements is essential to achieving safety success. Positively impacting an organization and affecting the beliefs, values and practices of every employee requires broad mastery of these concepts.
To safety professionals and most business leaders, these concepts are not revolutionary - they are ell known, and that is part of the problem. Familiarity with these concepts does not mean mastery. Honest and accurate assessment of each of these systems will reveal deficiencies that must be addressed to progress.
Based on the practical, straightforward concepts presented here, the safety professional must efocus and lead the way for these changes to redefine the critical business function of safety. It is through organic safety growth that strong systems will be leveraged to greater gain, weak systems will be strengthened, and the practice of safety will be advanced.
5 Core Principles (available in full paper).
The benefits of good safety are explained, uderstood, and accepted. Examples that support safety values are highlighted. A safety policy and philosophy statement is written so that it can be updated with current initiatives without having to change the core meaning. Persons in positions of authority and influence find opportunities to demonstrate the philosophy. They state their vision and then show that they know how to set the example about which they speak. Their actions define the standard of safety across their scope of influence.
Safety management is different from other business functions - it can't simply be integrated into them. Where synergies are logical, they should be leveraged - but there are great limitations. Comparisons with other disciplines illustrate this point. Quality is an important part of production or service, but it is also a separate discipline requiring different types of expertise. Manufacturing personnel must understand quality, but quality assessments still must be performed as the product is being made, and in labs to understand the effects of factors that determine product or service quality. Similarly, other business functions are even more separated. Human Resources is obviously a distinct discipline that is managed separately. The same holds true with Legal, Sales, and Supply Chain Logistics. Differing degrees of proficiency are needed by everyone to ffectively manage a business, but specialized technical expertise is required for individual business functions. Safety management is no exception.
