{"id":128,"date":"2008-11-11T23:44:50","date_gmt":"2008-11-12T05:44:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/?p=128"},"modified":"2024-07-05T10:31:58","modified_gmt":"2024-07-05T16:31:58","slug":"safety-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/safety-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder\/","title":{"rendered":"Safety is in the eye of the beholder"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, I attended the mandatory hour-and-a-half ‘newcomer’ safety training for my current work location.\u00a0 I’ve actually been here at this location for three months already, but I wasn’t able to attend the last quarterly conduct because I was too busy actually doing<\/span> my damn job (I was on a site visit at another location).\u00a0 I also learned this week that my project team is being moved back to my old location next month.\u00a0 So learning how to ‘be safe’ at this location at this stage in the game seems like a bit of a waste of time – hell, I’ve managed to survive three months without getting my head stuck in the photocopier, so I’m sure I can survive another one.\u00a0 Still, safety is<\/em> an important topic, so I dutifully attended anyway (besides, they record your attendance, and if you don’t go you get a black mark against your name).<\/p>\n

Most of the presentation was the usual stuff: offices are more dangerous than manufacturing plants (statistically true), you chair is a deathtrap (unless it’s been ergonomically adjusted), and other such motherhood topics.\u00a0 Every time you start at a location you have to go on the safety induction for that location and it always lasts 90 minutes even though 90% of the material is common to all locations, so it’s difficult not to drift off when you’re sitting through it for the fifth time.\u00a0 That said, for some reason I found myself actually paying attention today, and what I learned was pretty interesting (relatively-speaking…).<\/p>\n

We run a pretty comprehensive ‘accident prevention’ program here.\u00a0 A part of this is identifying potentially-unsafe behavior by way of ‘safety observations’, and removing bad behavior before the unsafe act could take place.\u00a0 The theory is that by eradicating the small stuff we can shrink the ‘accident pyramid’ – less ‘near misses’ at the bottom will lead to less actual accidents in the middle will lead to less deaths at the top.\u00a0 This seemed like a great theory when it was first launched several years ago, but like so many initiatives, it has now become bogged down in management and administration.\u00a0 After the initial flush of excitement when the program was first launched, participation plummeted, with very few safety observations being reported.\u00a0 A guideline was quickly put in place that ‘encouraged’ involvement by rewarding the department with the highest number of recorded observations per quarter with free ice-cream. Sadly (and inevitably) this led to abuse, with one ice-cream-loving manager recording made-up observations, working on the theory that even if he didn’t actually see<\/em> the unsafe behavior, it was something that could conceivably<\/em> happen and should therefore be recorded as fact<\/span>.<\/p>\n

Eventually, the safety manager cottoned onto this (after the same manager had won three quarters in a row) and decreed that a safety observation is only valid if the observer sees<\/em> another person doing something unsafe, engages in a dialog with that person, and the perpetrator commits to eliminating their unsafe behavior. But because unsafe accidents should decrease over time, observations will eventually dry up.\u00a0 But rather than seeing the opportunity to declare victory at this point, the company decided to promote ‘affirmative action’ as well, and encourages the recording of observations of safe<\/em> behavior.\u00a0 So if an observer sees another person acting in a safe manner, engages in a dialog with that person, and the ‘perpetrator’ commits to continuing to acting safely, then this is a good<\/span> observation, and should be recorded.\u00a0 The need for a dialog between the observer and the observed is heavily stressed, and our safety representative in today’s meeting went to great lengths to stress that if there was no dialog, then the observation should not be captured.\u00a0 Apparently regardless of how unsafe the act was.\u00a0 Which begs the question: If a tree falls on an employee out walking in the forest and no-one is around to see it, does it count as a recordable injury? Apparently not.<\/p>\n

Now, consider the following examples (both given in the training – honest to god, I don’t make this stuff up):\u00a0 Example 1: Two employees were approaching a corner in the corridor.\u00a0 Employee A glanced up at the installed corner mirror to make sure that no-one was coming the other way.\u00a0 Employee B noticed this and commended Employee A on their safety-mined approach.\u00a0 Employee B thanked Employee A for the observation and stated that they always checked the mirrors before turning corners.\u00a0 This is apparently a textbook observation, and should be recorded in our safety system as a model for us all.\u00a0 Example 2: Employee A sees Employee B driving whilst talking on the phone (a big no-no here), Employee A does not know the name of Employee B, and cannot engage in a dialog because Employee B is driving off, but makes a note of their license plate number anyway.\u00a0 This is an invalid<\/span> observation, because there was no dialog (plus, the license plate number is inadmissible because we’re not allowed to personally identify the miscreants), and therefore cannot be recorded.<\/p>\n

Why?\u00a0 Where’s the logic in this?\u00a0 Out of the two observations, the only one that is realistically actionable<\/em> is the second one!\u00a0 How, exactly, will the self-congratulatory safety-related back-slappery of Example 1 make this a safer workplace?\u00a0 All we’ve done is determined that people are observing the safety features we’ve already put in place.\u00a0 Well, whoop-de-doo; we’re still as safe as we were yesterday.\u00a0 In the second example, we could<\/span> have reasoned that talking on the cellphone whilst driving is an ongoing problem (it is – and it’s one of my pet hates) and issued some (more) corporate ‘guidelines’.\u00a0 If we really<\/em> wanted to be hard-nosed about it we could discipline the person who was driving and use them as an example to others.\u00a0 That<\/span> might make things a bit safer. But noooo…we don’t do that.\u00a0 We don’t do anything.\u00a0 We don’t even record that this has happened at all.\u00a0 Because it doesn’t fit into our carefully-managed safety observation system.<\/p>\n

To make matters worse, management have decreed that every individual person must record at least one observation every quarter.\u00a0 (And there’s no ice-cream if you do; just a black mark if you don’t.)\u00a0 And this observation must meet the above criteria with regard to dialog.\u00a0 There are hundreds of people at this location, and with the best will in the world, there just aren’t enough practical safety observations to go round.\u00a0 So we have ridiculous spectacles where people are staging ‘observations’ just so they can record something<\/em> and meet their target.\u00a0 “Hey, John, way to climb the stairs using the handrail!”\u00a0 “Thanks Steve – I always<\/span> use a handrail, as a matter of personal preference”.\u00a0 “By the way, Steve, I see you’re wearing slip-on shoes to avoid the potential hazard of tripping over untied laces,\u00a0 Well done!”.\u00a0 “Yes, I always wear slip-on shoes – either that or I duct-tape down my laces!”\u00a0 Towards the end of the quarter, when every-one’s getting desperate you can see people standing around, ‘observing’, just willing<\/em> you to trip up, or poke yourself in the eye or something, just so they can rush back to their offices and type you up for it.\u00a0 It’s stupid!\u00a0 How exactly is this helping make the workplace safer? Don’t get me wrong, I’m as safety-conscious as the next guy.\u00a0 I may be cynical, but I’m not stupid. Safety is important stuff, and everyone should be able to go home at night with the same number of fingers and toes as they had when they clocked in in the morning, but really<\/em>…\u00a0 What exactly are we trying to achieve, here?<\/p>\n

Still, it wasn’t an entirely wasted meeting.\u00a0 As is their wont, the safety committee gave out a free gift as thanks for our (mandatory) attendance. Trouble is, I’m not sure what it is.\u00a0 I thought it was a laptop sleeve at first, but it folds out into a black sheet about 4′ square that is plush on one side and satiny on the other.\u00a0 I’m thinking it’s maybe a batman cape (the handles work great as shoulder-straps), or maybe just a blanket to wrap yourself in against the cold of the air conditioning (which I’ve been instructed to leave at 65 Degrees F…).\u00a0 But as I start to snuggle up in it, I’m thinking that maybe I could accidentally suffocate myself.\u00a0 Hey, maybe I could write that up as this quarter’s safety observation!\u00a0 If only there were\u00a0 someone here to witness it<\/em>…!<\/p>\n

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