August 2009 Safety Message

Strengthening our Safety Values

Whatever we permit sends a strong and clear message this is what management condones. This plays a huge role in developing the right attitudes towards strengthening our safety values as a company. This means all levels of our supervision must understand that whatever the instruction they give, or authorize and allow our workers to do becomes our management’s expressed safety-will. Whatever the unsafe act or procedure that has been allowed regardless of circumstance or justification becomes the accepted way with management’s sanction. This is the ultimate case of leadership by example.

Unfortunately the wrong message has been sent and the most important part of safety – values – has been sacrificed. What happens next is luck, no one gets hurt and the belief that it was okay to act as such since there was no consequence. The choice we need to make every day through our countless actions on the job must be the decision to do the job the right way which is the safe way.

Strengthening our safety values is accomplished by bringing attitudes into alignment with responsible behaviour. Behaviour has ups and downs and when this behaviour gets down and it cannot cope with the inherent risks, an incident will occur. We fail to cope with risk in the work environment and therefore the behaviour-versus-risk problem is impacted by ones personal attitudes, habits and the culture they live in.

To strengthen our employees’ safety values we must bring a heightened awareness to positive attitudes and ultimate behaviour modification. We need to be consistent in our approach to safety and three of the most important fundamentals to ensure consistency in safety include one’s personal responsibility and increasing their level of ownership, the second includes the leadership role we play and thirdly it is the personal commitment and values and as people we must be constantly reminded what’s at stake for self, family, co-workers and the company.

Setting a good example is an incentive for all our fellow workers to work safely.