Environmental Safety

Manuele (2014) presents some compelling evidence that perhaps the safety and health profession should place more focus on the top of the pyramid rather than the bottom, however. His research has demonstrated that incident frequency may have been reduced over the past several decades, but severity has not decreased proportionately. He also shows that serious injuries most often occur in non-routine and nonproduction activities. In reality, this theory also seems to align with what can be observed by researching occupational fatality facts. Occupational fatalities often result from non-routine tasks performed by employees who often are unaware of the risks involved with the task.

Contrary to Manuele’s findings, however, most occupational safety and health professionals tend to focus most of their prevention efforts on routine and production activities. A typical checklist of a given safety professional, for instance, may involve items such as updating injury and illness records, respirator fit testing, arranging to have an area of a facility monitored for air contaminants, and preparing for an upcoming hazard communication training event. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the safety director, employees are using a forklift to load steel I-beams onto a flatbed truck parked on the street because the overhead crane broke down in the loading bay. Added to this situation is the fact that the forks on the forklift do not quite reach to the middle of the flatbed, so the shipping foreman had to conspire with the welding department to fashion fork extensions out of channel iron. This non-routine situation has all the trappings of a potentially serious accident waiting to happen.

Of course, in contrast to the risks being taken in our I-beam loading scenario, routine production activities tend to include lengthy periods of time, which increase the risk of some sort of incident occurring on the production line. If we are not experiencing serious injuries in these routine operations, however, maybe we have them under control and should focus more of our efforts on the non-routine tasks that are more likely to result in a serious occupational injury or illness.

It is important to implement safety management systems that support identification of the unknowns. Consider the forklift loading process scenario described above, for instance. Does it seem reasonable to assume that an organization with a well-developed safety and health culture that embraces occupational safety and health as a core value of the organization would avoid such a scenario?

Hopefully, your response to the question above is yes. Organizations that put forth an exemplary effort to create a culture where employees automatically consider the safe way of getting things done, rather than automatically considering shortcuts, tend to avoid the risks inherent in performing actions that are not well thought out. It is unlikely that employees of an organization with an exemplary safety program would have come up with a solution of loading I-beams from the street using job-made fork extensions on a forklift. Integrating well-designed safety and help management systems into the day-to-day work culture helps to alleviate the likelihood of individuals performing non-routine tasks without first analyzing hazards. In such an organization, incident reporting is encouraged, and incident investigations are thoroughly analyzed in order to identify root causes. Identifying root causes, of course, goes much further than simply finding something or someone to blame and typically ties causes back to flaws in the management system rather than worker behaviors. That is to say that worker behaviors and faulty equipment might contribute to a given accident and even be identified as direct causes. Well-designed safety management systems, however, take incident investigation a step further to identify why individuals engaged in unsafe behaviors or why faulty equipment was allowed to be faulty.

Manuele (2014) also discusses the fact that many errors have roots in processes and procedures outside the employee’s control. He states that while the human condition cannot be changed, the working conditions of people can. That is not to say that people cannot learn to avoid situations that may result in injury or illness, but that human behavior is influenced by many factors. This concept is what gave rise to the behavior-based safety (BBS) movement in recent years. Originally focused on identifying and correcting unsafe behaviors, BBS has grown to include examination of outside influences that cause people to make specific choices. Safety professionals need to understand at least some of the psychology that affects choices and decisions. For example, if workers are rewarded for completing a task in a specific amount of time, they may be more likely to disregard safe procedures that add time to the process. Decisions made at the top levels of management have a significant effect on unsafe behaviors and the resulting incidents.

The key point is not to explore the nuances of how best to conduct an incident or accident investigation, but rather to point out that the safety management systems approach is different from the typical compliance- based approach to safety. Employees are treated differently with respect to the roles they play supporting the safety culture, and the way safety is managed is very different as well. Management approaches are also typically well informed, and such organizations typically stay abreast of research and resulting changes in occupational safety and health theory and practice. ANSI/AIHA Z10 is useful in that it provides a framework for safety management that shifts the focus from individual behavior, specific hazards, or any single process to a system that integrates all social and technical aspects of accident and injury prevention. Using this socio- technical model, we become more aware of the interdependence of all the parts and begin to understand that they cannot be separated from each other.

Heinrich’s pyramid theory presented early in this unit lesson is not the only long-standing occupational safety and health related theory that has been re-evaluated in recent years. There are others, and many of the long-standing theories certainly warrant thought and provide useful starting points for more contemporary thought. Looking past the prevailing paradigms, however, is important for any field that wants to continue to move forward. For the last several decades, the safety management systems approach has garnered a great deal of attention and has been successfully implemented in many organizations, and this different approach to management will certainly continue to be improved in in the future.

References Heinrich, H. W. (1931). Industrial accident prevention: A scientific approach. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill.

Manuele, F. A. (2014). Advanced safety management: Focusing on Z10 and serious injury prevention (2nd ed.). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Palmer, A. (1942). AlfredPalmerRamagosa [Image]. Retrieved from http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:AlfredPalmerRamagosa.jpg