Next Steps
As someone wise once said in response to the question “how do you eat an elephant?” The answer: “One bite at a time!” Here are a few suggestions based on our experience that could help you take the next step or maybe even the first step toward updating your approach to safety and addressing fatalities and major accidents at your company. • Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. A lot of what you’re already doing is fine, and you should retain it. • Do a self-examination of the current model in use at your company. Are you accepting the default safety models as true without reflection? Are you looking at new models, but don’t know what to do with them? Have you embraced some new thinking, but have not operationalized it? Just knowing where you’re at can be useful in planning out the next step. • Consider the extent to which your approach to safety is holistic, makes sense, and supports your business, or if it seems piecemeal, fragmented, and seems to conflict with business goals. If it’s the latter, you most likely have hidden risks that are not being addressed. • Take a pulse on your readiness to change. Many companies want the quick fix to safety and this will point them toward the traditional models. However, quick fixes and easy answers leave the big risks unaddressed. Solving the deeper systematic safety issues requires leadership commitment, resolve and some facility with the new tools of safety. • The next time an incident occurs at your company, observe the automatic response. This will tell you more about what models are embedded in your culture than from reading corporate safety statements or speeches at annual events. These underlying models
become habits and habits aren’t easy to change. However, if we want to address the big risks, both habits and the assumptions that lie beneath them must change. There is a lot of interest around the world to create the next paradigm in safety. Both complexity theory and new approaches to leadership have contributed to our emerging understanding of what is next. A few companies are beginning to take steps toward replacing outmoded models with new and better ones in service of creating workplaces where both safety and business performance are enhanced. About the Authors…. Ray Master is the Director of Loss Prevention/Safety Consulting with Construction Risk Partners. He is accountable for the design and delivery of the firm’s safety consulting services. The offering aspires to challenge conventional thinking in construction safety in providing both safety management system optimization and safety culture/ performance enhancement. He has over 25 years of experience in construction safety spanning a wide range of industries to include heavy, power, process, high-rise buildings, oil/gas, marine, transportation, hazardous material clean-up and emergency response. Rick Strycker is the co-founder of WhyNot Partnering, a global company committed to creating workplaces where people thrive, offering support for enabling Why-Based Organizations and Why-Based Safety. Rick has been working with organizations for 30 years to produce extraordinary results. He has developed unique approaches to leadership, safety, and high performance all over the world mainly in high risk industries.
Utility and Transportation Contractor, AUGUST 2016
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