Superior safety performance accountability

Accountability for safety performance in the superior performing companies is clearly established with line management at every level. Safety performance is one of the elements scored in the organization s overall performance measurement system. Favorable or unfavorable results influence salaries, bonuses, and promotion potential. 

Make sure your proposal fits the corporate style and culture. Make sure your expectations for senior management are consistent with your company s operating style. For example, a CEO who is accustomed to delegating most decisions is unlikely to accept a role that seems to take away divisional authority, while a facility manager with little functional autonomy will probably be leery of taking a highly visible role without approval from a superior. Of course, the CEO retains overall accountability for environmental and safety performance—that cannot be del ated ... 

If an entity wants to achieve superior safety results, safety must become a core value within the organization s culture. Safety is culture driven. When safety is a core value within a company, senior management is personally and visibly involved and holds employees at all levels accountable for results. The senior executive staff displays by what it does that safety is a subject to be taken very seriously, a subject that is considered in performance measurement ong with other organizational goals. 

Discussions of achievements with safety professionals whose oiganiza-tions had top scores did not produce any surprises. Incident investigation for hazard identification and analysis gets done best where the organization s culture includes accountability for superior performance. Here is an aggregate Mst of the conoments made in discussions with safety professionals in those entities with the best incident investigation systems ... 

A safety director in a very large municipal organization with about 13,000 employees read an article this author wrote in which the necessity of having a positive safety culture to achieve superior performance levels was emphasized. That organization s work is considered high-hazard and fatalities and serious injuries often occur. The safety director had concluded that the senior executive in his organization, to whom he reported, was somewhat removed from the leadership necessary to further reduce fatalities and serious injuries, and that he did not hold the staff reporting to him accountable for their incident experience. 

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