When it comes to safety, organizations traditionally adjust their seriousness of response (and their tracking) based on the severity of the incident. The following diagram shows such an organization. The arrows are drawn based on the following question: “At what level of severity does each part of the management team usually get involved?”
Regardless as to where the lines are drawn on the continuum, basing the seriousness of our response on the actual severity of the injury is management by luck.
Management by Luck
One of the most common safety fallacies that supervisors and managers often fall for is this belief that the seriousness of the response must be related to the severity of the injury. For example, an employee uses the top step of a four-foot ladder to reach a ten- foot fascia and completes the task. The next employee does the same thing and falls breaking a leg. By basing the level of our response on the actual severity of the injury, the latter event requires a serious response while the former requires barely a mention. The severity of the injury is the only difference between the two incidents and it is solely a matter of luck. Unfortunately, we have propagated this fallacy over the years by connecting resulting severity with seriousness of response, categorizing incidents by actual severity, and measuring (tracking) our success or failure by the same. The simple fact that we regularly use the terms ‘near miss’, ‘recordable injury’, and ‘loss time injury’ drives us to this ridiculous approach. By measuring just claims instead of total incidents, we also perpetuate this error. Usually, this means the bigger the injury, the more complicated and intensive the analysis and corrective actions. This flawed philosophy, perpetuated by many elements of traditional safety programs, often results in the lack of accountability and responsibility; the loss of credibility; the creation of confusion; the expression of inconsistent messages; the taking of costly, unnecessary and ineffective corrective actions for the sake of action itself; and the loss of many opportunities for continuous improvement.
Lack of Accountability and Responsibility
If the plant manager does not get involved with an incident until the actual severity reaches the OSHA recordable threshold, he is not accountable nor responsible for anything that happens where the actual severity is lower. The same goes for the supervisors. If they do not respond until the employee gets hurt, they too can say that they are neither accountable nor responsible.
Loss of Credibility
The real hypocrisy lies in the fact that we expect our employees to bring safety issues to our attention as soon as they are aware of them. However, there lessons of experience tell them that management will only respond as the actual severity increases. A common employee response of that indicates this loss of credibility: “They (the management team) won’t do anything until someone gets hurt.”
If the thought process equates actual severity with seriousness of response, our actions appear to be knee-jerk and extremely inconsistent. The inconsistency arises, as described above, because the severity of the resulting injuries is most often a matter of luck. When two employees who take the same action but experience different physical results are treated differently by management, the inconsistency is obvious to all. These inconsistent responses by management undermine the credibility of the safety program and the supervisory staff; and our employees notice. They recognize when their supervisor says one thing and does another. This becomes even more apparent when disciplinary actions are taken against an employee who became injured for doing the same things that his supervisor has done many times.
Contributing to this loss of credibility is the lack of clear expectations. When employees do not know what to expect in way of a response, they are either disappointed or disillusioned. In the beginning, employees are told that safety is important and they can always stop what they are doing if they think it is unsafe. With a lack of clear expectations, over time, their definition of ‘safe’ deteriorates to ‘just don’t get hurt’.
Costly Ineffective Corrective Actions for the Sake of Action
Although it is true that medical costs are significantly higher for a broken bone as they are for a small cut, the big dollars associated with safety are buried in the engineering and operational changes made in the name of a safer work environment. When our responses are based on the actual severity instead of the potential severity and frequency, we become trapped into taking corrective action for the sake of action. Often times, these actions don’t address the actually causes and result in costly, ineffective changes. Such changes are both financially and culturally damaging.
Missed Opportunities
Statistics, and anecdotal evidence, tell us that we often have a few if not many opportunities to fix a problem before someone gets seriously injured. However, a team that manages by luck misses these opportunities because they are too busy reviewing statistics, enforcing rules, and developing ineffective corrective actions.
Leadership through Logic
Management by logic leaves nothing to chance. Logic dictates that our response must be based on the potential severity and frequency instead of the actual severity. To reinforce this point and recommit your supervisory team to the concept of managing your risk, ask your leaders where the lines should be drawn on the diagram below.
I would expect that your leaders would recognized that the lines must all be at the far left consistent with our expectation of our employees. There is no place where, in good conscience, we can draw these lines other than at the awareness level. This shift now drives the culture to accountability and responsibility, increased credibility, effective corrective actions, and continuous improvement.
About the Author:
As the founder of BRANTA Worldwide, Rodney Grieve has more than two-decades of hands-on leadership development and health and safety experience. A nationally recognized speaker, facilitator, and author (Defend Your Profits: Safety Tools for Bottom Line Improvement and SOAR: A Gate to Gate Journey of Leadership Essentials), Rodney personally conducts Branta’s workshops and mentoring programs. For more information, please contact Rodney directly at Rodney@branta.com or give him a call at 916.487.1919.
