004: Meaningful Employee Involvement in Safety

In this episode, I discuss the importance of meaningful employee involvement in the safety and health management system.

Some barriers to employee involvement in the safety and health management system:

-Disregarding the fact that all injuries and illnesses result from exposure to hazards.

-Perception by employees that management is primarily interested in disciplining “un-safe” acts without adequately addressing hazards and root causes.

-Personnel actions, such as promotions, compensation, demotions, disciplines, and re-assignments that are administered in such a way as to reduce or undermine the commitment to safety.

-Treating worker behavior as though it is a root or underlying cause rather than identifying hazards or system-related causes.

-Administering a post-accident program, such as drug testing, in a way that discourages injury reporting

-Not implementing hazard recognition and control measures and/or ignoring the hierarchy of controls.

-Blaming employees with undue emphasis on discipline instead of implementing system changes.

-Uneven accountability – focusing only on the line/hourly worker and not addressing “behavior” of supervisors, senior management and corporate leadership.

-Employee perception that production takes precedence over their personal safety and health.

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