If you didn’t attend Safety 2012, ASSE has produced several recordings
to give you a taste of what you missed.
Personal
Responsibility
Robert Pater and Christine Remmo’s session (691), “Building
Greater Personal Responsibility for Safety: With Workers and Managers,” engaged
attendees on the subject of personal responsibility for safety—and attendees
were engaged physically. By way of a demonstration, Pater showed them the
concept that “the most effective way to induce and build personal
responsibility is not by talk, but by action.”
Discussing the role of leadership, Pater makes reference to the
familiar phrase from Spider-Man—“With
great power comes great responsibility.” He suggests this phrase is backwards. “When
you take great responsibility for yourself, you have great power to change in
your life,” he says. When you’re always blaming other things, you’re saying “I’m
powerless.” When you take responsibility, you are saying “I have control and
power to change things.”
Accountability and Recognition
Sponsored by UL PureSafety, the session entitled “Safety Through
Accountability and Recognition: Achieving a World Class Safety Culture” (787), was
presented by Paul Esposito. “Culture, by itself, will not necessarily drive you
to zero accidents,” Esposito said. “ But its an absolutely essential part of
what you need to have in your corporation.” By the same token, management
systems alone will not achieve zero incidents. Instead, the session focused on merging
the two—culture and management systems—to reduce risk instead of just targeting
zero incidents. Esposito also talked about engaging and motivating employees—not
just motivating workers, but management as well.
Read the recaps of other sessions here and here, or check out several Safety 2012 video highlights on ASSE's home page. Individual session recordings will be available to ASSE members in the
near future by logging into the members-only section.
