The following article appeared in Safety Center Inside Safety Newsletter Vol 12, Issue 9 October 2012:
Loss Causes: Placing Unreasonable Pressures or Demands on Employees
In previous Points to Ponder articles, reasons for making wrong and potentially unsafe decisions were discussed to include:
- Improperly evaluating a problem
- Not creating expectations, policies, procedures or rules
- Creating improper expectations, policies, procedures or rules
- Not giving employees authority to take preventive action
We make thousands of decisions in any given day. We know that not all our decisions are correct. That's the way it is.
Nevertheless, when it comes to safety, being right is the only way to go.
Being wrong can lead to injury, accident or other catastrophic consequences.
In addition to the previously discussed reasons for making wrong and unsafe decisions, sometimes we do so because of unreasonable pressures or demands. Those pressures or demands can be so powerful that we take unacceptable risks to get the job done as quickly as possible, disregarding what we know to be the safe and correct way of working.
Such pressures or demands may come from those people to whom we report. Pressure has been put on them to get the job done regardless of what it takes. That means short cuts must be taken to gain speed rather than to maintain caution to prevent employee injuries and property and equipment damage.
Such pressures may come from our peers. Someone has a game or a concert to go to after work and needs to get the job done faster than the safe rate of speed.
Such pressures may come from ourselves. Something urgent in our own lives is pressing upon us to get the job done quickly so we can get to whatever else is putting demands on us.
No matter from where the pressure emanates, pressure pushes us to work at an unsafe pace and/or in a way that stops us from working safely, using the correct equipment, following the established safety procedures or even working through an unsafe situation that needs corrective action to be taken now rather than waiting until an accident happens.
Have you ever heard an organization proclaim Safety First?
Such a proclamation sounds good, but often does not play out in real life. Safety First occurs when nothing else is present to take its place. When something is present to take its pace, like getting the job done faster due to pressures and demands, then safety is no longer priority #1. It is priority nothing.
Safety needs to be part of the mission of the organization, part of its values, rather than given a superficial priority that only exists when everything is perfectly right. Safety is not just for the ideal situation. Not even unreasonable pressures or demands should permit anyone to do the work in an unsafe manner. Working safely is all the time.
Make Correct Safety Performance Matter on
a Moment to Moment Basis!
a Moment to Moment Basis!
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The ideas for Points to Ponder articles come from Safety Center's 12-day Safety Management Specialist Certificate (CSMS) program, and from Safety Center's short course entitled Safety Management for Employees Who Supervise. Check out these course descriptions-- Professional Safety Management or contact Quen Cach in the Northern California office at 800-825-7262 or Gayleen Grigoreas in the Southern California office at 909-625-9650.
