EDITORIAL COMMENTS: Workplace safety is "undermanaged'
At the National Safety Congress & Expo earlier this fall, I bumped into one of the wise old gents of safety. His family ties to worker safety go back generations. We chatted about the old days (what else?), and then he smiled wistfully. “You know,” he said, “sometimes I get so frustrated by safety. I see young people coming into the field and they get it, you know? Then something like BP in the Gulf happens. Something like BP in the Gulf always happens. And you wonder, will they ever get it?”
Not as long as workplace safety is undermanaged by top management. Which has been forever.
According to research, the safety function is far from the only staff discipline to be undermanaged. So if there is any silver lining here, it is that safety, for once, is not being picked on, singled out. But it has been chronically underserved by those in power.
Since 1993, an outfit called RainmakerThinking, Inc. has conducted what it calls “research on the dynamics of supervisory relationships in the changing workplace.” According to the group, “Late in 2002, we began to focus our research on an alarming pattern: We found that a huge preponderance of those in leadership positions, at all levels, were severely ‘undermanaging’ their direct reports on a day to day basis. That is, a great many leaders, managers, and supervisors at all levels in organizations of all shapes and sizes in every industry were not providing employees with what could be considered ‘the basics of management.’”
According to this research, an embarrassing nine out of ten employees say they do not get the four basics of good management from their immediate boss on a regular basis (at least once a month):