Compliance based safety

OSHA compliance-based safety programs are lacking a continuous improvement component. 

Spending a company s resources to improve safety by switching a compliance-based safety program to one that proactively improves safety can reduce all of the direct and related indirect safety costs. 

The ability to impact people and, therefore, the cultural side of safety will determine the success of a safety program. In this chapter, the elements of an existing compliance-based safety program are contrasted with a proactive, employee involvement-based, lean safety program. 

This section provides a discussion about the differences between risk-based and compliance-based safety assurance and the efficiencies and advantages of having a risk-based approach. 

That s right—compliance-based safety programs are not enough to prevent injuries. I think everyone understands that—even the people at OSHA. Workplace injury reduction driven by compliance to OSHA has been impressive. Here is some supporting information from the OSHA website. 

Compliance-based safety programs, and many safety professionals and managers, rely on discipline to enforce, and reinforce, compliance to the... 

Discipline is woven into the fabric of compliance-based safety programs and used as a tool by those who manage them. Insurance carriers even ask their clients to provide discipline records as a way of ensuring a company is serious about safety The use of discipline is a very contentious subject in the compliance-based safety community and I have had some emotional... 

See Audit and Compliance Based Safety for additional related information. 

The compliance-based safety approach is effective and useful however, its major drawback is that it does not ensure that all system potential mishap risk is reduced to the lowest effective value practical. Prescriptive safety provides a known basic level of safety, but it may fall short if further safety features are necessary for a particular system. Prescribed safety requirements only address a known set of hazards. Even for a compliance-based safety program, it is still necessary to perform HA to ensure that all hazards have been identified and the risk mitigated to the lowest level practical. 

See Compliance Based Safety and Prescriptive Safety for additional information. 

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