Skills Resource Group: "Safety First"

Safety first, or not? That is the question. You walk into a company and see the sign. How do you know Safety is really first? Maybe there are other signs you should rather look at if you are interested in the truth.

Safety First

What do the signs tell you?

Usually, when I see the “Safety first”-sign I immediately start to suspect the worst. Over the years, the sign got a bad name. Too many companies and organisations have misused the Safety First concept for their own gain.

Most companies have “Our people is our greatest asset” and “Safety First” in their boardrooms, on all the notice boards, “bold print” in communications and on company promotional material. Spending lots of money in promoting, Safety and Safety systems as “Safety is priority in our company”.

But do we really “walk the talk”? Let us look at some of the signs that tell the real story.

Who will win, Production or Maintenance?

Usually the question is, “Is our company a “maintenance driven”, Production company or a “Production driven”, Maintenance company?”

There is always finger pointing between Production and Maintenance on who’s to blame for production interruptions/downtime.

Usually this fight is won by Production, but where does Safety fit into this argument or will Safety only be mentioned if there is an accident, sometimes even resulting from, or during a maintenance or production incident?

“ZERO Tolerance”! Have you seen this sign before? If we subcribe to Zero tolerance, do we then declare, “Our company is a “Safety driven”, Production/Maintenance company”?

Is it really SHEQ or actually just Safety?

What about the “H – Health”, “E – Environment”, “Q – Quality” and another “S – Security”, which is also usually excluded from the SHEQ acronym? Most companies talk “SHEQ” but only do the Safety part.

Is SHEQ only an “after thought” and spoken about or considered if there is a negative impact on the company?

All SHEQ hazards/aspects have the potential to harm our business, people and natural environment, hence require equal consideration and focus.

Do we talk integrated and manage separately?

The initial focus on SHEQ was silo driven as legislation dictated and was managed independently. Now the focus on Safety, Health, Environment, Risk and Quality along with the traditional Operations and Supporting services require an integrated, dedicated and focused approach.

SHEQ should be integrated in the day-to-day activities and managed accordingly.

Our business should be managed as “Partnerships” across functional boundaries:

Partnership between Production and Maintenance: Production needs Maintenance to ensure available and reliable equipment.
Partnership between Maintenance and Commercial: Maintenance needs Commercial to ensure contracts are in place with suppliers/service providers to ensure required material/equipment/resources availability.
Partnership with Human Capital Management (HR) to ensure required availability of skilled and competent personnel.
Partnership with SHEQ to ensure we operate our business in a sustainable and responsible manner, not harming our business, people and natural environment.

The blame game

We also often question our SHEQ systems: “The system is not working for us; The system is too cumbersome…”. We conveniently forget that the same system we’re now complaining about was implemented due to previous systems, “not working for us…”or being too “cumbersome”.

We’ll rather blame and change systems than taking responsibility to “manage” the system as an integral part of our business processes.
“No system replaces a business process; it merely supports the process.”

Safety first?

SHEQ Systems should be implemented, embedded and managed as an Integrated Management Information System, which reflects your company’s conformance and performance accurately.

Safety First

With management direction, drive and an integrated business process approach, SHEQ will contribute to sustainability, growth in a responsible manner and add value to any company in an ever changing global arena.

We no longer will need to make silo focussed statements like “Safety First”. We will declare, “SHEQ is our company’s drive”.

Article by Harvey Du Pisanie via SheqAfrica.com

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