Making Workers Want to be Safe.

On the side of almost every police car in the US you see the words “To Protect and to Serve.”  Not a hint at catching you doing something wrong, because their first goal should be to keep people safe.

Every person working in safety should have the same goal: to protect workers from harm so they can return to their families.

Every company should have exactly the same goal: First be safe, then be compliant with regulations.

In a previous article here I wrote about the four levels of protection (see below: http://safetyrich.blogspot.com/2011/05/four-levels-of-protection-from-hazards.html).  The fourth level is the worker.  We call that Behavior Based Safety – making sure the worker wants to be safe. 

I made some new friends yesterday who work for a company that manufactures gas detectors (http://www.ldartools.com/). They mentioned that some workers will actually shut off an alarm so they can continue working.

The worker needs several elements to be fully in charge of their own safety:

1. The training to recognize hazards.

2. How to report hazards so they are corrected.

3. Full understanding that the employer would rather have a hazard reported than for the worker to continue with risks.

4. Empowerment to report the hazard without repercussions.

5. What is likely to happen or is going to happen if the hazard is not reported.

An employer should work just as hard at making sure the final level of protection – the worker – is as effective as the other three.

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