Managing Safety Performance News

Managing safety performance– sending everyone home safe at the end of the day – is fundamentally a game of execution. No matter how good the game plan – policies, procedures and programs – when it comes to bottom line safety performance, the game is won or lost on the field.

Read the mission, vision and values statement of just about any industrial company these days, and you’re bound to find safety prominently mentioned. Words to the effect that “The safety of our stakeholders is of critical importance to the success of our business” can be found right next to the other goals and values so important

It’s a scene that every one in operations and those of us who have ever managed operations knows all too well.

We’ve gathered up the entire department for an important safety meeting – important because we’re rolling out a new company safety policy.

When we were kids growing up in school, we all knew who the leaders were. They were the ones who were the best athletes, had the best personalities, and yes, were the best looking. Everybody – us included – followed them. They made leading look easy – and cool.

Sooner or later anyone who’s ever golfed as fallen to the temptation: buy the latest club to hit the market. The one guaranteed to knock strokes off next Saturday’s round.

Every once in a while, the latest technology works like magic. At least for a few rounds, and then we revert to form.

The people running operations – making the product, delivering the service, handling the materials – really are world class when it comes to measuring how well their business is performing. They’re all over all the important details of how much, how well, how often.

The management team has gathered around the conference table in an emergency meeting. The urgent topic: what to do to stanch the rising tide of accidents and injuries?

In his years of working with industrial clients, Deming built what many of us in the manufacturing management business would learn as his “14 Absolutes of Quality.” In the middle of his list of Absolutes was the proviso to “Drive out fear”, fear of getting in trouble for making defective products and reporting quality problems was a major roadblock to progress.

Good questions can do the heavy lifting for managers. A question starts by getting someone else talking. For all of the sophisticated theories that have been offered about the art of interpersonal communication, doesn’t communication fundamentally boil down to someone speaking, and others listening to what is being said?

Of all new assignments we encounter in the course of our career, no one is bigger than the change from managing yourself to managing others. When our new assignment and responsibilities were described, we were reminded “you are also accountable for the safety of those assigned to you.”