PSYCHOLOGY OF SAFETY: World-Class Safety: What does it take?
Recently, the CEO of a leading chemical company told me he dislikes the term “world-class safety,†because its meaning is so ambiguous. “Everyone talks about wanting a world-class safety program, but nobody provides a straightforward definition of this vision. What does it mean to be world class?â€
This is the first of three columns exploring what it takes to be world class in workplace safety. My answer does not come from common sense, but from more than five years of empirical research. In “From Good to Great†(2001, Harper Collins, NY), Jim Collins and his research team studied 11 companies that rocketed from being good to achieving greatness — generating cumulative stock returns that on average were seven times better than general stock market — for a sustained period of 15 years.