Steve's Safety Minute
#5
The Most Immediate Effects of a Safety Management System
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How can you measure the quality of your safety management system performance? A system, by definition, has inputs, processes and outputs. You can tell how well the system is working by looking at the outputs of the system.
Thoughts. The most immediate effects of a safety management system to an employee are thoughts. That's right! Thoughts. Everything employees experience, hear, and observe in the workplace educates them something about "way things are around here." What they see co-workers, supervisors, and managers say and do teaches them what's important.
Behaviors. What the employee thinks will influence the next most immediate effect of the system, a behavior. Behaviors represent the vast majority of the direct causes for accidents in the workplace. Distraction of any kind will increase the probability of an accident. Thoughts and behaviors may produce the next most immediate effect the safety management system. Many inherently low-hazard workplaces have high accident rates (usually ergonomic-related injuries) because employees are not behaving. Why aren't they behaving? For one reason or another, they don't think they need to behave.
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Conditions. Thoughts and behaviors produce hazardous conditions in the workplace. Hazardous conditions, although not the direct cause of most accidents, are usually involved in causing injuries. Hazardous conditions exist in most workplaces, but unless an employee enters the "danger zone," the condition can not cause an accident. Many inherently hazardous workplaces have very low accident rates because employees are behaving. Why aren't they getting hurt? They think it's important to behave.
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