More than 30 years ago, one of my mentors in the graduate safety program at West Virginia University provided an insight that I continue to embrace. It guides much of my thinking and my actions, still today. C. Everett Marcum, often espoused his foundational belief regarding accidents, which was, “Accidents are signs and symptoms of management’s failure, to deal as effectively as needed, with its resources.” By extension, it stands to reason that organizational leaders must create the right climate and culture for people to work efficiently, effectively, and safely. And it’s up to leaders to determine how much risk their organizations are willing to accept.
I believe it’s up to us, as leaders, to provide the right facilities, materials, tools, and equipment. And it’s up to leaders to keep looking upstream in order to continuously improve our facilities, materials, tools, equipment, people, and processes.
It’s necessary for leaders to hire the right individuals and to remove the wrong people as quickly as possible – especially those in leadership roles.
I believe it’s clearly up to organizational leaders to create the right climate and culture for safety, by becoming as transparent as possible, and by becoming as approachable and open to the communications of its workers.
And it’s necessary for leaders to appropriately engage workers, so they buy-into the various programs, processes, procedures, and at times, move from engagement to ownership of these same programs, processes, and procedures.
It’s also up to us to provide the right systems for near-miss, accident reporting, data reporting, and analytics.
And it’s up to organizational leaders to provide the right learning opportunities and to appropriately influence the attitudes and actions of its workers, every day.
I could continue with many additional thoughts, going much deeper and broader with additional cultural dimensions, but I won’t bore you. I think you get the picture.
So the next time you, or anyone else wants to blame your workers – maybe, just maybe, the failure lies somewhere else.
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