Creating the Safety Mind
What is the number one contributor to a safe workplace? It is each and every worker’s personal involvement in and commitment to workplace safety.
It is what you and everyone you work with does – or does not do – to promote personal safety.
It’s about having a Safety Mind. One of the most powerful ways to increase personal safety is to be an example.
People will tend to follow those who “walk their talk,” and not those who just talk. Walking the talk is the mark of a true professional.
What actions can you take to become a “safety professional?”
You must (1) Get involved in promoting a safe workplace, (2) Be committed to learning and (3) Exhibit safe behavior to create your own Safety Mind.
1. Get Involved
How involved are you in the company’s safety processes? Do you consider yourself a “safety professional?”
These are just a few questions to ask yourself to determine if safety is a personal thing for you.
No matter how you answer the question, you are involved in safety. Being involved may mean that you are merely a statistic. Yep, like it or not, you are involved.
If you work safely, then your safe behavior has a positive effect on the overall safety of the company.
If you have a workplace accident or even a near miss, you impact those around you and the company’s safety statistics.
Furthermore, if you have a fatal accident or a life-changing accident, there is a dramatic effect on your family and your fellow workers.
Creating a safe workplace is impossible without the active participation of everyone in the organization.
This is the reason there must be a constant effort to create and maintain a workplace environment of trust, one in which every person is encouraged to speak up about safe work practices and contribute to the overall well-being of the organization.
Such an environment promotes each worker taking personal responsibility for safety. What is your attitude about safety at your job site?
Are you constantly on the watch for unsafe working conditions? Is your personal safety attitude limited to the job site?
For example, what is your “safety attitude” when you are shopping in a grocery store and see a slippery hazard on the floor?
How you handle safety on and off the job site is a measure of your personal safety attitude.
Safety professionals behave in a safe way, encourage trust in the organization and take a personal interest in others’ safety. In addition, they are constantly learning.
2. Be committed to learning
How do professionals become professionals? They study. They observe. They listen. They have a positive attitude to learning. They learn.
If you need open heart surgery, would you want a doctor who learned how to operate by just showing up to watch others?
What if that doctor depended on others to tell him what to do?
I bet you would rather have a doctor who is constantly learning everything he or she can about the most up-to-date techniques and procedures for successfully performing open heart surgery and one who applies what he is learning.
In the same manner, would you trust your workplace safety to everyone else knowing that they may not know everything they need to know?
Being a professional is to take personal responsibility to “Learn, Learn, Learn!”
3. Exhibit safe behavior to create your own safety mind
Actions that are observed by people are known as behavior. Behavior is like an iceberg floating in the ocean.
What is showing or can be seen is the tip of the iceberg, but what is below the water line causes the whole iceberg to move or react to the surrounding environment.
Outward behavior is like the tip of an iceberg. There is much under the surface that affects a person’s behavior. A person’s behavior is affected by five things that are not seen:
What they think and feel about something, what they value and believe about it, and what their need is at the time.
So if a person acts or behaves unsafely, what are they thinking, feeling, valuing, believing or needing?
An employee was checking the voltage at an electrical cabinet, and he was not wearing electrically insulated gloves. This is an unsafe act.
Another employee was parking a company vehicle.
Instead of backing into the designated parking space, the driver just pulled into the space, ran inside the building to retrieve some material and then jumped back in and backed out without doing a walk around. This is another observed unsafe behavior.
Every hour of every day we can observe different tasks being done unsafely. Do the people doing these unsafe acts know better?
Yes, they do in most cases. Then why do they behave this way? What can be done to change the behavior? What would safe behavior be?
To deal with these questions we have to explore what causes behavior, both safe and unsafe.
Behavior is the activity that can be seen by others. Each job or task has a safe behavior tied to it.
Consider safe vehicle operation. One of the safe behaviors for operating a vehicle is the use of seat belts. We have seatbelt rules
“Wear your seat belt when operating a company vehicle. If you don’t, you will be disciplined. This can be a challenge to many of us who would perhaps “make it click” while on company property and then release the buckle as soon as we are off company property. Why? Maybe because we didn’t think we’d have a wreck! Or we think, “It will never happen to me.”
We may feel that the company was imposing a rule on us. We probably think that seatbelts didn’t have much value.
However, the safe behavior of wearing a seat belt become a result of what we think and feel, value and believe, and need.
Unsafe behavior will change not because of a new rule, but as a result of a change in the way a person thinks, feels, values, and believes and in their understanding of how safe behavior can fill their needs.
There is no way to guarantee that an employee will not be injured in an accident.
However, each individual can decrease the possibilities of injury by becoming individually accountable for safety.
The key is personal action.
How will you act toward safety? How will you talk about safety? How will you perceive your industry safety standards?
What will you personally do about safety on and off the job? Will you create your own safety mind?
No one can make anyone accountable; it is up to the individual. Accountability comes when you set standards for yourself.
When you begin to involve others who can hold you accountable, your awareness is raised.
Professional sports athletes are held accountable by their coaches and other teammates. Additionally, they sign a contract that holds them accountable.
What if that same accountability were to be used in the development of your safety mind?
Companies spend many thousands of dollars each year to equip and train the workforce. It is the responsibility of each employee to put the equipment and knowledge to work.
When personal responsibility is put into action,accidents and injuries will decrease. What can you do to create your own safety mind?
Ref: Potter, Carl; Making Safety a Personal Thing; Article on www.electricenergyonline.com
“The last of the human freedoms is to choose one’s attitudes.” — Viktor Frankl
Thanks for the share, TO!
