RIF, Recordable Injury Frequency, the worldwide standard for judging safety performance, is often talked about as inadequate, but in actuality is seldom, if ever, replaced. Why use this concept?
In the workplace and with the family, we have all made mistakes that we wish we could take back and start over. Well, at least I have. This is not a one-occasion event. There are lots of times I have said or done things that later on cause me to cringe.
It is hard to tell when observation processes first came on the scene. Maybe they came in back in the 1930s with H. W. Heinrich as he developed his ever so controversial injury pyramid.
A topic that never seems to go away is safety incentives. One of our Safety Perception Survey questions deals with the concept of whether employees would work more safely if they were paid more for doing so? Once again today a customer posed this question as it is a frequent battleground for the 900 or so separate organizations they are responsible to assist with safety.
When safety is a core value, you believe that all injuries are preventable. When safety is a corporate value, companies strive for safety perfection. Companies that strive for perfection are committed to attaining zero incidents and they work to manage business operations to make it so: it's the essence of a culture of sustainable safety excellence.
In one of my other career lives, I assumed responsibility for an injection molding business that was plagued with poor quality, late deliveries, deceitful rumor mongering and, of course, the resultant threat of bankruptcy.
Senior leadership is an easy target for most any complaint. Politicians, hourly workers, organized labor, front-line supervision and middle management all seem to blame “rich, uncaring upper management.”
I recently received the following inquiry: “We're getting ready to perform safety coaching sessions with some of our frequently injured employees. Do you know of anyone who might have a script to outline the dialogue?”
Over the years I have watched many safety professionals struggle to get their message across. In addition to this basic struggle another has also been common: an inability to be promoted beyond a position that just evaluates and enforces government safety regulations (regs).
I have often used a safety perception survey originally developed by Dr. Dan Petersen as a safety culture diagnostic to help focus an organization’s efforts on areas that the employees believe need improvement. One of the questions in this safety perception survey reads something like “Would a safety incentive/recognition program cause you to work more safely?