In a meeting today with a client who is implementing a new safety
management system, one of the attendants of the meeting made the comment that
its nice to have safety professionals available to help them determine what’s
safe and what’s not because they don't do safety for a living. This is a
reasonable comment to make - after all, they don't get paid to be safe. There's
all these regulations to learn and all these terms that safety pros throw
around (like “confined space” or “risk”) that not everyone knows. It makes
sense that safety is given an “us and them” mentality given how difficult the
safety profession often seems.
Now, I have some thoughts as to why this is the case, but that’s for
another blog on another day. But think about the comment that the person made –
we need safety pros to tell us what’s safe. That’s sort of a shame if you think
about it. After all, isn’t self-preservation a very fundamental human behavior?
Aren’t humans wired to be safe? Many of the behavioral responses that humans have
are there to help us stay alive in a world full of things that are trying to
kill us. We take this for granted because it happens many times on an
unconscious level, but we all are safety managers in that we manage our own
safety.
This may seem like one of those safety motivational blogs, and it kind
of is. But in the specific case I’m talking about the person was talking about
a confined space where they thought it was dangerous but they weren’t sure. My
point to them was, if your body is telling you something is wrong, this body
that is wired to identify hazards, there’s probably a reason and you should pay
attention to that. Don’t start the job until you look a little bit closer
because something is wrong.
Now don’t get me wrong, the opposite is not true – if you don’t sense a
hazard that doesn’t mean its safe (again, more on that in another blog). Our
bodies are good at identifying some hazards, but we’re really bad at
identifying other hazards. This can be made better through training and deliberate
practice.
The point I’m trying to make though is that we need to take the emphasis
off of the safety profession to make us safe. What if, instead of one person on
a job site looking for hazards, we had hundreds? In the safety profession we
call that collective mindfulness –
everyone out there doing their jobs but being mindful to identify those diffuse
signals that could indicate impending failure.
So, get out there and put your safety hat on. You just might see
something you never noticed before. Maybe a new hazard. Maybe a better way to
reduce risks. Often these have unintended consequences of also improving
quality and efficiency. Whatever it is, being more mindful while working makes
everyone a safety professional. And that makes for a safe job site.
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