Dysfunctional Practices: that kill your Safety Culture (and what to do about them) by Ludwig Timothy

Author:Ludwig, Timothy [Ludwig, Timothy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Calloway Publishing
Published: 2018-02-07T00:00:00+00:00

You will often see an iceberg superimposed on the safety pyramid. I was up in Newfoundland doing some training and had a chance to go out and view the icebergs coming down the Labrador current from the Arctic. I mentioned to the safety pro who accompanied me that the icebergs were huge! And he said “That’s only the tip of the iceberg. Underwater, that is where most of the iceberg is.”

The tip of the iceberg is all you see. In safety, the tip of the iceberg is what is visible to managers. Serious injuries are obvious, they cannot be hidden. If your company has a fatality would everyone in the company know about it? Would the local press know about it? Would the government know about it? Absolutely. Same question: If your company had a serious injury, something that will affect the individual the rest of their life, would we all be aware of the incident? Yes .

I got an Ouchee

Let’s hit the waterline now. How much do you know about your work- force’s minor injuries? What is your reporting culture around minor injuries? What percentage of minor injuries do you know about? Some of these minor injuries are above the waterline. This could be the case if a worker suffers a cut and seeks first aid and it gets recorded or a manager witnesses the minor injury. You can also see some of the iceberg right below the waterline, although it may be distorted. Here we may learn about a minor injury sometime after the fact or learn about one through the grapevine.

Unfortunately, many minor injuries are not reported. Why? Let’s say you are loosening a flange with a wrench and the wrench slips. You bang your elbow pretty good causing a nice bruise. Whatta you gonna do? Go to your supervisor and say “I got an ouchee” ? These are rough jobs worked by tough people who might find it embarrassing to make a big deal out of something minor. Maybe these types of bangs and bumps are just considered part of the job and not something to report. Bottom line, you’re worried that if you tell people that you slipped and banged up your arm on the job you’ll earn the label “stupid” or clumsy.

It’s possible that you used a cheater bar to get more leverage from your wrench on the flange bolt. The rules are pretty clear against cheater bars but the tool crib is way over at the loading dock and you and your buddies hid some metal tubing just for this purpose. So you bent the rules (and probably the tubing) when you got your bruise. You gonna tell your boss about this? Probably not.

There are other reasons why you may not report a minor injury. What happened the last time you reported an injury? What was your experience? If you had to be taken off the job and go to the principal’s office to fill out a long form I bet you wouldn’t find it rewarding.

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