Display boards - its importance

Many times, persons question about the importance of bill boards, its utility and money spent is considered as waste. Questions are also raised about, does the reader / viewer is serious to understand and follow.

Apprehension were particularly w.r.t. posters, slogans, etc. 

The way bill boards attract about products / entertainment visuals, the same way boards with preaching may not attract.

However, over a period of time, suddenly, a realization may come to the viewer by comparing his/her own experience and it strikes them for better. 

For that particular moment to arrive, it can be immediate or it may take months/years together. Again, over a time, persons will forget. But, these displays act as a reminder.

Till such time, though it looks simple, the meaning is not understood. 

We have to remember that slogans / proverbs are the outcome of somebody's experience or forethought. These are same as rules and regulations made after observing so many incidents / events.

Hence, we should give sufficient thought, have creativity to make attractive boards for personnel to see and understand at the earliest so that it helps them to follow for better, helps in day-to-day activities, develops attitude and safety culture. 

Significance of Leadership for Safety in Licensee Organizations: Self-Regulation

Yesterday, I listened to a seminar through virtual mode on the above topic. The message conveyed through all presentations was good. The presentations were also interesting and captured my attention. I attended a similar seminar a few years ago also. 

The important points to take home are as below:

1. Leadership is to be exhibited at all levels to ensure safety.
2. Self-regulation is important and is helpful to growing organizations.
3. Organizations shall have self-imposed goals and should work for them (self-regulation), rather than looking to the regulators to identify their drawbacks (here, third-party audits will be helpful, if the organizations do not have the competency to identify their problems).
4. The Decision-making process is an important activity to identify and correct the situation before it escalates.
5. We can't sit quietly by taking pride in our past successes. Our past weaknesses are there still and can endanger us.
6. Self-regulation through safety culture will help in safety management and lead the organizations to a successful path.

Certification

As a part of operation of a production unit, we need to maintain several records. Some of these are made or updated by internal staff, while others require examination and certification by external/authorised officials.

The intention is to ensure safe and healthy work place. The records should be genuine. If any malpractice is there, like a spoiled child, organization also goes in to gutter, at some point of time, if not immediately. 

One should not be happy with immediate effect, rather the focus should be on long term basis. Internal mechanism to check authenticity of the books shall be strong and robust to detect mistakes from short-sighted officials. Such persons need to be corrected with appropriate actions to discourage others. Even, if it delays the regular work. Then only, the culture of the organisation can be strong for the better.

The first impression of a visitor to the organisation will reflect the organisation's culture and values.

Everything looks fine - Are you Okay?

Do not be complacent.

Life is going fine. In this serious pandemic situation everywhere also, I am healthy. Does it mean we can ignore all measures taken till now? 

Same is the question, every manger has to ask himself about work place safety. No accidents or injuries till now does not mean that he can relax procedures and allow shopfloor personnel to work the way bypassing safety procedures. 

Actually, a sense of well being,  sometimes, induces complacency instead of motivating personnel to work better.

Initially, it starts with occasional  incidents which may not go to the notice of the manager or they are covered or ignored as one time affair. And, then the frequency increases and finally the organization will be in big soup with irreparable damages.

Let us not forget the hard work and culture created before reaching the heights and we should not have fall from that height. Instead, aim for bigger goals.Let us try to become a leader in the industry regarding safety at the work place. 

At no time we should think after an incident without injury or loss, that today, we are saved by luck. Dump the luck factor and work hard.

End of financial year - some to do listing

As the end of March month is approaching, industrial establishments will be working at frantic pace to meet their annual financial year production targets. It is likely that here and there safety requirements are skipped thereby increasing the risk.

It is better to plan testing of equipment like cranes, hoists, other material handling equipment, pressure vessels, safety relief valves, calibration of instruments,  inspection and repairs of structures and buildings, painting of equipment/piping/structures, preventive maintenance of equipment, load centres, transformers, PDBs, DG sets; cleaning of drains, etc in the beginning of the financial year at which time stress levels are supposed to be low compared to the last quarter of a financial year. Even refresher courses can be planned and conducted wherein managers will relieve their staff to attend the programmes. 

This will facilitate ensuring readiness of men and machinery and other infrastructure for safe work without accidents, incidents.

Safety monitoring should be done more stringently during peak production periods which will indicate the safety culture of the organization in times of pressures all around.

Intolerance to safety is not tolerable.

In any workplace, if employees are ignorant of safety procedures, they can be identified easily and can be trained. But, if persons are arrogant to comply with safety requirements even after gaining the knowledge, then they are more dangerous and can endanger the lives of others also. 

 Such persons should be summarily dismissed from the jobs and shown the door. These types of persons will even spoil the work place safety culture and can set a bad example for learners.

Intolerance to safety is not tolerable.

Leader's behavior drives safety culture

At a Fleet Safety Conference, Shell Global Road Safety Manager stated in an address that leader's behavior drives safety culture in the organization. He repeated a quote from former CEO of Royal Dutch Shell that poor safety reflects lack of leadership.

It is of no use if one has a policy which is not followed. Display of policy may create good impression to visitors. But, not following it will lead to poor culture leading to unsafe behaviors, accidents and will eventually pull down the organization's image.

It is said that a good safety culture means the way we work safely even when nobody else is watching. Our conscience is our witness. If we try fool others when we behave one way in front of others and the other way in the absence of others, finally we only get into accidents. It is our life that is at risk.  One may get good pat on the back but we should pat ourselves that we are doing a good job.

Shell's 12 life saving rules can be found here. Though these are not exhaustive, but still these can save lives of workers. 

Lessons learnt from process safety accidents - an article from insurancenewsnet.com

A good article is found on the above title, narrating lessons from five less known accidents. The lessons are,

1. containment of water from fire fighting operations to avoid contamination of water sources in the rundown 
2. to consider all auxiliary equipment also as important as main plant equipment for understanding hazards
3. not to ignore hazards and need for monitoring even during shutdown 
4. positive isolation, purging and checking for hazardous atmospheres (using flame is not a correct check for presence of flammable atmosphere)
5. follow written approval system to override interlocks
6. follow safety permit procedures
7. identify the correct equipment before taking up work
8. communicate with clear identification while handing over the equipment for maintenance
9. ensure physical check by another agency before permitting equipment operation/maintenance
10. hazards from dust, propagation of dust explosions
11. preparation of emergency response management, with detailed instructions for every type of emergency
12. good house keeping
13. establish process safety management procedures
14. inculcate good safety culture, starting from the top management

An article in Yahoo - Forbes on assessment of continuing our present job

In an article that I saw in Yahoo, six points are listed as checkpoints to see whether our present job is suitable or not to continue.

Some of the points are like, no more impact, people are not liking the ideas, don't like going to the work, etc which are mostly faced by safety professionals. Unless safety culture is introduced from day one of the factory started, people don't like to follow safety principles, as they feel that they are imposed. With people around not liking/listening means no impact in safety culture in the factory inspite of best efforts by the safety professional making him feel irrelevant, no job satisfaction, and don't feel like going.

But, this will be the situation generally everywhere as there will be hard nuts everywhere and if one keeps changing the job, finally the person will be branded as rolling stone and will not be considered for jobs at all. Possibly, one should do more research on the company he intends to join before and try to settle.

Some thoughts on culture / safety culture

One of the definitions on safety culture is "the way one works even when nobody's watching". If an organization functions truly the way even when there is no monitoring, as it functions under observation, then its culture is said to be good.

If everybody works safely without monitoring / reminding / without the need for display of posters, slogans, etc then really safety culture has been imbibed in their blood!!!.

It means, there is no need for safety department and can be disbanded as every employee has taken that role on himself.

A leader should not get blinded by reports from few lieutenants / spies (the spoilers who increase the distance between the leader and subordinates) in the organization to know what is happening. Everybody should be able to communicate to him so that he gets a fair idea of what is happening and how things are moving in the organization. Once such reporting is established, it aids in safety culture also.

Etiquette / decorum during safety meetings, classes

Participants in the meetings and training programmes find it disturbing when they see some audience 

• argue without end
• talk with others
• get phone calls with loud ring tone
• converse in phone loudly not bothering about the session
• sleep (some with roaring sounds)
• read something
• etc

Such acts make it difficult for the meetings/classes to conduct smoothly and nothing can be achieved. Persons indulging in such acts should think how do they feel when they are conducting the meeting / class and then they will realize the mistakes they are making.

It is essential for all to maintain the discipline / decorum / etiquette atleast when they are in a group and if they do that even when they are alone or in closed rooms also, then it speaks of their good cultured behavior. And safety culture is defined as the way we behave when no one sees us.

Ensuring use of PPE (personal protective equipment) by employees - whose responsibility?

Recently, in a conversation during an audit, I heard the following instructions to supervisors and employees about the use of PPE:

1. Tell the shopfloor incharge to check for wearing safety shoes by all as there are some visitors.
2. Tomorrow, audit team is coming. Tell everybody to wear safety shoes and goggles.
3. Arey baba, wear shoes. Otherwise, we will get non-conformity (NC) by the audit team.
4. If you don't wear safety shoe, unnecessarily, safety man will write letter.
5. etc

The above will only show (shoe) that we have to wear safety gear only to please somebody and that the manager will not get any remarks from visitors or audit / inspection team. Nobody thinks that PPE are required for our own safety. The way we wear our clothes without being told by anybody, why don't we tell that PPE are required to protect our body parts, but NOT to protect the skin of plant manager / supervisor.

This shows that though we shout from roof top that safety is our first priority, it is, in fact first from last. It is in a way, an abusive word. Or, hatred term. Some managers may even have hatredness by seeing the safety persons even from distance and may be cursing the fellow.

In such organisations, who can save the workmen. Even GOD can not save them, as they want to inflict injuries to their own workmen from whom they want to get better production. 

Here, even workmen should be blamed for not wearing PPE. Else, why one should tell or keep on telling wear this, wear that, and so on. Don't they know? Supervisors / managers / safety officers should only do monitoring job to correct the mistakes made unknowingly, not to tell everyday same thing to those who do not want to follow. Such persons should be removed from the work. Then only, others can be protected. Otherwise, youngsters who join the organization may pick up or learn the work to do in a wrong way. 

Here, the issue is not about wearing only safety shoe or helmet or something else. This way of working leads to wrong work practices and poor safety culture. 

And an expert defined safety culture as the way we work (or do things), even when nobody is watching.

Safety education - a subject to be made compulsory at all levels in schools and colleges

Even after so many years of industrialization, with all available knowledge, still, accidents are taking place. This only shows that managements pay only lip service for safety in their organizations. 

It appears managements think that having a safety department means that it is the responsibility of safety department to ensure safety and that other departments like production, maintenance, quality, etc need to be told what is to be done for ensuring safety of all. 

This also means that safety is not part of all activities and it is seen as an additional activity like an extra organ in a body, which nobody likes. 

Though people like to remove the extra organ, if it is not possible to remove for any reason, then people bear with it, cursing it or their fate. It appears, safety department is also in a similar situation. One can not avoid it because it is mandatory to have certain number of safety officials as per the local government's legislation. At the same, like the extra organ people don't like it. 

The fact that there is lot of friction between safety and other departments in the organizations shows that there is no safety culture. And culture is defined by experts as the activity which one does even when nobody else is watching. Good culture leads to safe work behaviors and no accidents.

This is all because, it appears to me that safety is not taught from the childhood. If it is included as a subject like language / maths / science / etc, then it is imbibed in the minds and is treated with all respect it deserved. Safety management should not be thought as the work of safety department. It should be an integral part of all activities. 

Person dies after long hours of work

An intern died after reportedly spending long hours of work. Legislations specify certain number of hours of work per day, per week, etc and limits on overtime hours also. However, these rules are mostly applied to factory workers and I am not sure whether they are applied to supervisors and blue collared employees in the same organization. 

This leads to spending long hours at work place by these people, either by force, or even if there is no requirement, may be to learn the work, or to get attention of higher authorities. This type of work is not possible forever. If somebody joins as trainee/apprentice and even for regular employees, managements of any establishment should strictly enforce working hours, instead of being a passive onlooker. Only then, these types of incidents can be avoided at the work place. It is all in work culture which is guided by safety culture of the organization. 

http://www.theguardian.com/money/2013/aug/21/bank-intern-death-working-hours

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/uk/Intern-at-a-London-bank-dies-after-working-for-72-hours/articleshow/21947167.cms

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/08/20/bank-of-america-intern-dies-after-working-three-straight-days.html

Actions speak the truth

 People, particularly those in higher positions say, 'do what you speak and speak what you do'. But, we find many times in reality that only people speak and do not demonstrate. It is hypocrisy. 
Audience, particularly those who are not from the same organization, feel and think great about the speaker by listening to the tall claims. But, insiders will have pessimism about talk by such leaders.

When some lower level employee speaks, nobody cares. But, when same of even lower level employee of some other organization speaks, people will be attentive and give respect. This leads to heart burn among the employees of the organization to which this leader belongs.

Sometimes, when talks are given by employees of same organization in which the show is conducted, higher level people go out to do their business, but this is not the case with talks from employees of other organizations. This leads to wrong impression among employees as participants that boss does not care about the speaker (and his work) and thus they too need not bother in future. This is particularly harmful to the organization when the speaker is from safety department. Similarly, questioning (or ragging) safety department employees in front of others for whatever reason it is, leads to wrong projection of importance to safety and this will only spoil safety culture.

Safety: Can You Have Too Much of a Good Thing? » SafetySmart

Safety: Can You Have Too Much of a Good Thing? » SafetySmart

The article is about the experience of Australian psychologist during his interaction with employees of a corporation. Some opined that too much safety (directives, guidelines, procedures, initiatives, etc) will lead to safety saturation and employees may try to take short cuts like those in traffic jams where motorists try to ignore signals out of frustration of feeling obstructed, that they are unable to make move, and so on.
How much is too much is a debatable point and requires efforts of all heads in important positions along and CEO of the organization, I feel, should be biased towards safety rules and regulations, while taking a final call for implementation of safety systems, so arrived.
Being a safety professional, I am unable to agree with the statement that too much safety (is there really such a thing) works against safety culture. But, I should be open to ideas and lack of knowledge or understanding  should not make me not to listen to ideas.

Ego - obstacle to safe practices

Generally, safety professionals have advisory role. Any advise from company's safety professional(s) may be taken with good heart, reluctantly accepted because of pressure from top management or will be rejected vehemently. Sometimes, safety professionals will be questioned about their knowledge/experience/capability in matters of production activities and production managers try to draw a line saying that they are more capable of taking care of their work and also of safety in their work place and that they do not need any advise from safety professionals.
However, when some incident happens, safety professional of the company will become the first target of these production managers, saying that they were not sufficiently warned about the hazard, that the safety professional slept without doing his job, and so on. This will be the case even if there were some incidents in the work place.
Surprisingly, sometimes, even regulators too question safety professionals of the company instead of engaging the production managers for safety related lapses in the work place.
The ego in the minds of production managers (and down below) is an obstacle to listen to the voice of safety professional and this endangers safety of employees in the work place. They do not accept the fact that there is something (mindset to see the dangers and to learn lessons from events) missing on their part leading to occurrence of nearmisses, incidents and accidents. Any occurrence is taken as onetime affair and is not acknowledged for system deficiencies. Even efforts will be made to cover up the issues or not to bring to the notice of safety professional for investigation and thus do not want to learn lessons.
The case studies, lessons from occurrence that are freely available in the internet are taken as too theoretical or that these are not applicable to their work place. Nobody can help such managers and those working under them will only become easy prey to the hidden dangers.

New year resolutions - Incident reporting culture

Wish you all a healthy, happy and safe new year.

Everybody will be cheerful and resolve to do so many to have a good year. At the end of the year, when we review, there may be some misses and some are forgotten. Everybody wishes for zero accident status in every sphere of work. But, this is possible only when there is a good system of reporting each and every incident whether it involves or not, of injury, property damage and environment damage.
It is reported widely and is also observed that many incidents do not come to the notice of  colleagues, supervisors and managers. This can be due to the fear of rebuke, chiding and becoming a fool in the eyes of others. Sometimes, an enthusiastic employee is dissuaded from reporting. If the employee reporting the incident is issued notice for occurrence of incidents, then he will try to cover from next time. Or, if warned, to ensure that there are no incidents, then also he will not report, though he may try to take some measures to prevent recurrence of such incidents, or he will take care that it will not go to the notice of superiors.
I feel that unless the problem of not reporting all incidents, however minor in nature they are, is not addressed, there will not be any improvement in shop floor safety. And, this is possible and can be done only with the whole hearted commitment and support from the top man of the organization. Though, critics question getting results from the action of one person (i.e top man), being in-charge of all affairs and with his powers, he is the only person who can influence the thought process of all persons down below for a safe production.
One can ask why incidents should be reported? When an incident is reported, it will be investigated by a team comprising production, maintenance, safety and other experts and analyzed for root cause and suggest measures to be taken. If it is not reported, then it may not be investigated, and even if investigated, it will be the individual or his friends which may not lead to effective investigation. Then, each work place should have a mechanism for periodical review on action taken on  recommendations. There should not be any delay in implementing the recommendations. Otherwise, improvement can't be achieved and we will see repetition of incidents again and again.
Sometimes, it appears so simple to take action but will find inordinate delay in implementation. This reflects lack of concern for safety of persons and generally reflects organization's poor safety culture.
When performance of individuals is reviewed, inputs on number of incidents occurred, number of incidents reported, measures taken to prevent incidents at the work place, extra work done to ensure safe place in areas not of his concern also should be obtained along with production figures by the assessor, which will send strong signals to all employees about the intention of the management for a safe work place.
Else, employees will be bothered about reaching production targets without caring for preventive measures to ensure safety of persons and environment.
Jobs done routinely i.e accident investigation after occurrence will yield only limited results whereas a paradigm shift in thinking of the decision makers will help in achieving good results in improving safety culture and ensuring a safe work place.

Character and culture

I was going through a book titled 'Turning Point - Enlightening Essays on Life Part 1' published by Swaminarayan Aksharpith, Ahmedabad. In this book, there is a chapter on Character in which the quotation of Dwight L Mody is stated as 'Character is what you are in the dark'. 

National Petroleum Offshore Authority in its information booklet (A98443, Revision 1, Oct 2009) defined safety culture as 'Safety culture is how the organisation behaves when no one is watching'. From these two statements we can say that safety culture of an organization is the outcome of character of the individuals responsible for running the organization. Individuals makeup the organization and thus organization's culture is defined.

What we are doing in our day to day activities is not new to us. It is routine and we know how to do it safely. Still, we don't for various reasons. Nobody needs to supervise/watch us and tell us how to do a work in a safe manner. One need not tell us to read the established procedure, know the hazards, wear personal protective equipment, and so on. We know. Some of the tasks were known to us by our intuition / common sense. Still we ignore  for quick gains. We may complete a job without getting hurt ourselves or others. But, a day will come when we become victims of our own actions and that day we repent for our actions. 

Some statements on safety

Following are some of the statements in "Process Safety Analysis - An Introduction"  by Bob Skelton published by Institution of Chemical Engineers, UK.

1. A good safety culture ensures that both the spirit and the letter of the law are fulfilled.
2. Attitude to safety should be highly visible and shared at all levels within the company.
3. A well managed company is almost invariably not only a profitable company but a safe company.
4. Changes in existing plant are costlier than that introduced in design stage.
5. Design should be such that operator intervention is not needed for at least 30 minutes after an incident. Experience has shown that operators can not always be relied upon to make the correct decisions under immediate post-accident conditions.
6. Safety in design must be both proactive and reactive. Changes, once a plant is built, are very expensive compared with changes at the design stage.  It is not sufficient and cost efficient to make safety review after completing the design and then BOLT ON safety devices. It will not be cost effective. Engineered safety is BOLT ON safety. Engineered protective devices can fail and never place too much reliance on BOLT ON safety.
7. Commissioning is one of the most hazardous parts of any process plant operation. Not only do design errors which escaped previous checks manifest themselves but problems due to construction errors also become obvious. In addition commissioning generates hazards of its own as the plant moves from construction to operating status. It is essential that a formal set of checks be carried out before process fluids are introduced for the the first time.
8. Fire and explosions can be prevented  by not exceeding 25% of LEL. Flammable atmospheres can be avoided by ensuring that fuel lines and tanks are pressurized so the flammable material leaks out rather than air leaking in. good ventilation of vessels and plant areas can maintain safe working conditions.
9. Dust explosions are best prevented by good housekeeping - that is, by keeping the concentrations of dust down and perhaps keeping the dust damp. Inerting by dilution with non-combustible dust is another effective technique, frequently used in coal mines.
10. The risk is serious in case of static electricity, if the relative humidity is below about 60%.
11. Explosives manufacturing facilities are usually designed so that the buildings are separated by safe distance, surrounded by earth mounds so that any explosion will go upwards rather than affect other plants in the area. In addition there is usually a limit on the number of people allowed in a building.
12. Fire fighting water causes more damage than the fire itself, when polluted water is let into rivers. There may be a conflict between accepting the atmospheric pollution caused by letting the fire burn out and the water-borne pollution caused by fighting it.
13. Non-process hazards account more than 70% of all accidents in process plant.
14. Many of the worst accidents in the process industries are the result of bad maintenance practice. Ex: Piper Alpha and Flixborough
15. As many people die by asphyxiation as from toxic gases.
16. A good health and safety policy is always cost effective; most organisations grossly under estimate the cost of accidents, often by an order of magnitude. The organisation should be such that the attitude to safety is highly visible and shared at all levels within the company. Active participation is encouraged to promote the objectives of not just preventing accidents and industrial illness but motivating and empowering everyone to work safely.
17. A safety culture, once established, must be maintained, any any tendency to careless practices stamped out at once. Experience shows that 80% of accidents tend to happen to 20% of the workforce - the young and the old being particularly vulnerable.  Many accidents are caused by operators not fully appreciating the significance of small, but nevertheless important changes.
18. A good system of accident reporting is proactive and reactive, whereas most tend to be purely reactive.
19. Effective safety at all stages of a project - from inception to demolition - can only be achieved if there is a commitment at all levels. The senior management must see health and safety as being just as important as profitability and they must make certain that all their workers are aware of this fact.
20. A well managed company is almost invariably not only a profitable company but a safe company.
21. In hazard analysis, a distinction must be made between routine operator action and operator intervention in an emergency.  For routine operator action, the operator can usually take time and is under no great stress. Safety assessments involve the prediction of the likelihood of errors when the operator is taking corrective action against alarms. The time for corrective action may short, the operator is liable to be under some stress and so the probability of errors is greater.
22. Total elimination of human error will never be possible. Use must be made of the science of ergonomics to ensure that everything possible is done to enhance the strengths of human operators whilst at the same time allowing for the weaknesses.
23. The most important rule is, 'inherent safety is better than engineered safety', ' what you have not got can not leak'. Even elaborate safety devices can't reduce risk to zero due to the escape of a noxious substance, but replacing a noxious substance by a more benign one could well eliminate that risk altogether.