Driving Safety Improvements: Six Gears

Todd Hohn, CSP, vice president with UL in Franklin, TN, points to six key areas where safety either improves or breaks down. In his proceedings paper for Safety 2013, he refers to these areas as six gears. “Like gears, these areas are interrelated and there is an upward progression toward peak performance,” he explains.

Gear 1: Worksite conditions
Gear 2: Employee behaviors According to Hohn, these two gears are pretty fundamental. “Regulations in these areas get everyone moving toward safety by mandating certain worksite conditions, hazard management, appropriate equipment, training and so on, and most programs accelerate well beyond compliance,” he writes in his proceedings article. “Still, there are limits to the quality and consistency of safety performance that can be achieved by focusing on these areas alone.”

Gear 3: Safety management system
Gear 4: Accountability
“A safety management system must define the values, goals and strategies that will align diverse processes and functions, while also providing benchmarks to gauge progress and guide corrections,” Hohn explains. “Clarifying roles, responsibilities and lines of authority, and providing reliable means for communication within processes and systems are also essential for accountability and clarity.” According to Hohn, continuous improvement depends on these gears—and on the quality, quantity and frequency of data that they provide. “The most effective safety management systems are engineered to collect and respond to leading indicators,” he says. “Correlating leading indicators with lagging indicators over time makes them even more valuable, guiding the allocation of preventive resources to where they’re needed most.”

Gear 5: Safety culture “Top-performing companies take a proactive approach to strengthening their culture — starting with clear definitions of what stronger looks like, strategies to get there, and ways to measure and assess strength,” Hohn says, adding that “in an organization with highly evolved processes and systems, culture building permeates every activity. The pay-off can be profound.”

Gear 6: Institutional knowledgeHohn suggests that the aging workforce make it “more critical than ever to capture institutional knowledge. . . . Otherwise, much of this knowledge—whether it involves safety, health, quality or basic job skills—could literally disappear when workers leave.”

Hohn also offers careful consideration of these key questions:

1. How proactive is your safety and risk management? 
2. Is your organization committed to continuous improvement? 
3. Do you want to measure everything you can? 
4. Does senior management support your safety goals? 
5. Are safety leaders ready to lead the charge?