OSHAcademy Safety Training Network - Ownership, Responsibility, and Accountability

Ownership, Responsibility, and Accountability

Ownership

Determining who has ownership in a safety and health management system should be fairly straightforward. Everyone who works at the company should own at least part of the system. Everyone has a responsibility to contribute, either by assignment, by design or inherently to the system. And those who have assigned or designed responsibility should be accountable to the management or staff of the company for safety performance in their areas of responsibility. However, the system is “owned” by everyone who contributes to it. As a machine operator, I would “own” the safe use of my machine. As a machine shop supervisor, I would “own” the safe use of all my machines, the training of my machine operators and the activities and maintenance of the safe workplace for my machine shop area. As a company owner or manager, I would “own” all the safety related work practices that occur at my company or facility.

Responsibility

Determining who is responsible for the system may be a bit more intricate and involved than “owning” the system. By being responsible, that means that you are charged with ensuring that work activities proceed safely and that the safety and health of employees (either yourself, your co-workers or your underlings) is not jeopardized. You are obliged to assure that the workplace activities under your control are safe. You have readily assumed the obligation and duty to make these assurances and you can be depended upon and relied upon to carry out those duties.

Accountability

Accountability, like ownership, is fairly straight forward. Accountability means that you will be judged on how well or effectively you carried out the duties you were responsible for. An accounting or explanation of the actions taken (or not taken) will need to be made to management or supervision. This is your credibility stake in the process.

Putting It All Together

The easiest way to put the whole system (ownership, responsibility and accountability) together is to create a strategic plan, that establishes generalized goals for the management system, and assigns responsible people (who have the authority and accountability) to implement the actions needed to achieve the goals.

Source: RIT OSHA OUTREACH CENTER - Harwood Grant