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Fallacy: Safety Is Everybody’s Business
Fact: Well, not quite. Safety can be everybody’s business only if properly structured. It becomes everybody’s business only when individual roles, responsibilities and expectations, RREs, are clearly defined for all. For a start, it has to be managed as an integral part of the business for the benefits to become manifest. There must be management leadership to provide direction and resources, supervision, organization, communication and employee buy-in for things to work as planned. Only then can one say with some degree of certainty that Safety Is Everybody’s Business in the organization or company!
Fallacy: Safety Is Common Sense
Fact: If it was solely commonsense that pivots safety, how come there are thousands of workers killed or maimed each year with trillions of naira worth of property damaged at the same time? Would anyone rightly say therefore that all those involved had no commonsense? No, fact is safety has to be grown and nurtured as a culture, a workplace way of life, to secure the safety of assets, people and the environment. With time what is routinely practiced may become commonsense.
Fallacy: Money Spent On Safety Is Avoidable Waste
Fact: Nothing could be further from the truth. Experience and research show that for about every N1000 spent on safety, up to N100, 000 is saved. For instance, a machine operator on a production line has his hand crushed in the machine trying to clear product sludge from the work surface. The entire production line is stopped for 3-hours to enable immediate rescue of injured, repairs/replacement. What do you reckon is the true cost to the company beyond the immediately visible costs N100 000, N500 000 or N1.5m or no idea? ‘No idea’ is probably a better guess because no one can really say for sure until the aftermath activities are duly concluded and all expense bills come in. But if your guess was N1.5m or more, then you’re on the right track. Heard of the proverbial iceberg theory? Hidden costs are usually disproportionately higher than visible costs of a so-called workplace accident.
Fallacy: Safety Is For Big Companies. We’re A Small Operation!
Fact: They say the bigger they are the harder they fall, true. But in safety, the opposite is readily true also. Consider a large organization with several operating units across the country under independent management teams. Say a particularly devastating workplace incident occurred in one of their units. The ensuing production loss and other resultant effects will be confined to the affected unit, while the rest of the organization can actually profit from the incident by way of lessons learned.
Now consider the case of a single entity Small Operation: the cost of that one incident may actually spell its demise because of lack of capacity to recover or absorb the negative financial fallouts following all the attendant issues of the occurrence. Or consider a large trucking company with say, over 100 trucks in its fleet. A call comes in on a particular day of one of their trucks getting involved in road collision, jettisoning it’s cargo on the highway, somewhere. The Company dispatches a cleanup and salvage crew to immediately go and do the needful while the rest of the trucking business for the day continues apace without any further hitches as a result of the collision because the company has the capacity to deal with the occurrence. Now consider the case of a small, One Truck competitor, then draw your own conclusions.
Fallacy: Accidents Only Happen To Bad People and Bad Organizations
Fact: Accidents happen to all people, good and bad. But they don’t have to happen, they are caused. Accidents happen because of what we do or fail to do. That includes all players in the chain – management, supervision and employees, contractors. Everything must stand in equilibrium or it falls. If employees and management do not do what they are supposed to do namely, follow procedures as approved or do not know what to do ie inadequate training, then something will surely go wrong at the end of the day.
Fallacy: We Intend To Pay Our People, Our Employees Very Well; They Won’t Be Susceptible To Accidents
Fact: Adequate reward or compensation has its place in the scheme of things. In fact you are required by law to pay government minimum wages of which non-compliance could land you in hot water. But safe employee performance is not solely dependent on good wages. Every employer is expected to provide their employees with a safe place of work, safe systems of work and safe tools for the work! Approved wages or reward is embedded in one of those elements.
Harriman Isa Oyofo
Harriman Isa Oyofo isCEO, Mann Associates Limited, Leading HSE & Loss Control Practitioner
