Current State of play in Safety
Fix the fault or make the process safer after the incident
- Institute safety procedures in the workplace (Soft Controls instead of Hard controls)
- Instill a culture of safety in the organization (By far the most difficult)
Fixing issues is the most common response, whereas proactively instilling a culture of safety in all workplace activities is rare. Safety culture involves all employees to have the state of mind to be alert to their surroundings; analyzing their actions and environment every minute to ensure that they are working safely.
Safety programs integrate training initiatives, enhanced communication practices, monitoring of safety metrics, incorporating safety culture and implementing analyses to improve safety in the workplace.
The organizations that have the most successful safety programs in industry can be identified by the deep integration of safety into the culture of the organization with visible support from top management, resulting in regular safety meetings, management physically visiting and interacting with the workforce, use of Job Hazard Analyses and other proactive measures to improve safety. Even so, most organizations continue to have workplace incidents that sometimes border on very serious or even fatal. In such a scenario, the need for better safety systems that go a step above what currently exists in industry cannot be argued.
Are You at Risk?
Risk of safety incidents is present in all industries. The type of recurring injuries and percentage of fatalities may differ across sectors, but most, if not all sectors are exposed to risk from safety incidents that may result from failing safety systems, risky behavior or lack of proactive safety control measures. Having a system to manage risk effectively is important across the board, in order to prevent safety incidents.
All enterprises regardless of their injury rate history can benefit from integrating current technologies into a centralized database and analytics system that will allow them to understand root causes of safety issues and predict probabilities of future occurrences based on trends and analytics. In a like manner all enterprises can benefit from the use of real-time safety data to implement real-time safety actions.