THE Priority

Every organization recognizes the importance of workplace safety. The consequences of injuries are felt in both the business financials and more importantly, in the personal impact to the person and those close to them. The importance of workplace safety has increased significantly over the years. Injuries were once viewed as a cost of doing business. Most organizations now view safety as fundamental to business success.  

While there has been significant progress made in the appreciation of creating and managing a safe workplace, people continue to get injured on the job. Despite the best efforts of good companies and good leaders – most of whom have defined safety as a top priority – an average year will see 5,200 fatally injured at work just in the US. Life impacting injuries are also a major challenge for every organization. 

A common theme emerges when leaders are asked to explain why an injury has occurred. Often you will hear surprise and disappointment over the decision someone made that resulted in the event.  

In many cases, very good people with significant experience simply made bad decisions!    

Understanding Decision Making 

Leaders are often at a loss to understand – let alone provide an explanation – for these poor choices. You will hear leaders share the fact that safety is discussed multiple times a day every day, in various formats and situations across the workplace. You will also hear leaders share that safety has been established and communicated as a priority for the organization. Corporate vision and mission statements routinely reference that fact. Training, crew meetings, pre-job work assessments, observation programs, and audits have been implemented to reinforce safety as a priority. Prior accident investigations might have identified a process gap that was a factor in the accident. Corrective action was taken.  

Nonetheless, leaders also understand hazards can always be found, and there will never be rules, policies, and procedures to eliminate every risk in the workplace. With that in mind leaders also recognize employees must make good decisions in the moment, and on the spot, to ensure they go home alive and well at the end of the day.

That brings us back to the fact we often see good, well trained, experienced people make bad decisions that cause harm. With safety clearly communicated as being among the top priorities in the hierarchy of business values, why does this happen? 

Part of the answer may be found in the routine process of communicating priorities.  

What’s The Message?

I spent the first forty years in my career working in the paper industry, much of that time serving as a front-line leader and facility manager. I made a point to talk about safety at every opportunity. It was part of my daily discussion with individuals and crews. 

From my perspective as the leader, I worked hard to make safety a top priority. However, many of those discussions routinely included communicating the importance of productivity, cost, quality, and customer service. Safety fell into that hierarchy of “business critical metrics.” Despite my efforts to ensure safety was recognized as a priority, I witnessed first-hand good people make poor decisions, resulting in near misses and in some cases – serious injuries.  

Far too late in my career I came to appreciate the role I played as the leader in their questionable decisions. Simply stated, I failed to define safety as THE priority as opposed to a priority.  

That made safety one of many priorities.  

In those defining moments when someone must make a critical decision on what to do, if safety is just another priority, bad decisions can be made. Short cuts save time, and time is money. Complacency says, “I can handle the risk.” 

The rational for taking unnecessary risks are endless, and often surfaces in the course of the accident or near miss investigation. 

That root cause really is as simple as “too many priorities.” 

THE Priority!

Leaders owe it to their followers to be crystal clear that safety is THE priority! While the difference between safety as a priority and safety as THE priority may seem like a small distinction, it represents a world of difference in the thought process of those doing the work: it is black and white; there is no gray! 

Defining safety as THE Priority is a foundational first step in effective leadership. It is critical in those defining moments that take place every day across the workplace.    

Just as critical is the need to help employees understand why safety is THE Priority. Until employees can internalize the importance of safety, it risks remaining one more corporate expectation.  

Many of us lose sight of why we get up and go to work every day. It can be as complicated as Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, or as simple as thinking about the most important things in our lives. Answering a simple question – What are the most important things in my life? – can lead us to the answer as to why safety must be recognized as THE Priority.  

For many in the workplace, taking care of our family and loved ones will often emerge as a common response to the question. That answer actually represents our personal values. Companies have values, but as individuals, we also have values. Our personal values play a critical role in our daily decision-making process. Fundamental to decision making behavior is our assessment of consequences. The decisions we make every day can be traced back to our assessment of consequences, some consciously and many unconsciously.  

That’s what we call The Case for Safety.

Making The Case for Safety

The Case for Safety is grounded in recognizing the consequences, both positive and negative, associated with the decisions we make around working safely. In those defining moments when critical decisions are made, values and the assessment of consequences play a key role. The thought process we want in play is this: if I take this shortcut and get hurt, how would that impact me? What impact would that have on the people most important to me? 

Will that thought process guarantee good decisions will always be made? No. Does it up the odds a better decision will be made? Absolutely. That thought process increases the odds a good decision will be made independent of the presence of a leader. 

The Case for Safety requires leaders to make a bold but unequivocal statement to their followers that defines safety as THE Priority. When safety is one of many priorities, good people will make bad decisions in the heat of the moment, often thinking they are doing the right thing for the company.  

The Case for Safety must be made constantly and consistently by leaders. Simply stated, it’s reminding followers why they get up and go to work every day. 

Bringing The Case for Safety back to the individual’s personal values sets the stage for a caring workplace, and a culture grounded on sending everyone home alive and well at the end of every day.

A Closing Thought

There’s one more reason why establishing The Case for Safety is every leader’s most important job. Ask any leader to describe their worst day on the job, I guarantee the response will be a story of an accident that took place at work. The leader will recall the person, the exact circumstances of the accident, often the date and time, who else was involved, what followed in its aftermath. That response will often be expressed with a level of personal emotion that reinforces the incident as a defining moment in their life – not just their work life.  

Bill Wilson
February 2024