Mike Williamsen Ph.D., CSP

After a presentation on effective recognition as a means of improving safety performance I received an intriguing question:  Can you advise how to measure if managers are providing feedback … and how effective it is?

Enforcement ... does that mean discipline? Wait … what is discipline? As I was growing up and in need of firm guidance, discipline was often kicked off when my papa told me, “You’re in a heap a’ trouble, boy.”

As a famous cliché reads: the devil is in the details. I often get asked about the details of a viable safety accountability culture. An example of visible executive involvement is personal commitment to safety accountability (S/A), to be involved in a review and discussion of appropriate actions for all significant incidents and near misses.

H. W. Heinrich changed the world of safety fundamentals forever with his pioneering work in the 1930’. One of his concepts that continues to make me think is his accident triangle (pyramid), a concept that we all are familiar with.

The search for viable leading indicators to replace lagging injury statistics is a hot safety topic these days. I do not believe we will ever be rid of injury rates as a metric used to judge safety performance.

To make a change in an industry’s safety performance, the first necessary element is a guiding coalition/steering team that will help work with the various idea/solution providers and the wide ranging customer base and its leadership. My team, Caterpillar Safety Services, has worked with similar guiding coalitions in: the wind industry; the electrical transmission and distribution industries, an OSHA strategic safety partnership; the North West Public Power Association (NWPPA); the National Mining Association, as well as large, decentralized industrial companies.

I use a concept called the Six Levels of Safety Performance as a practical model that takes an organization from a fundamental safety regs approach all the way through to an organization that is passionately engaged in leading the relentless pursuit of a zero-incident safety culture.

A blog follower recently asked: Is there anything from Caterpillar Safety Services outlining the positive things or actions that we can expect to see in facilities with “world-class” responses to the survey questions for each of the survey process elements? Back in the days of the survey development one of the team members, Dr. Dan Petersen, defined world-class safety as an organization that was within the best 10 percent of his customers at that point in time.