Table of Contents
I. Implementing Safety Management
II. Implementing Safety Culture
III. Promote by Strategic Methods
XI. Risk Assessments
IV. Proactive Disposition
V. Commitment
VI. Clever and Naive
VII. Development of Policy and Procedure
IIIX. Forcefulness of Safety
IIX. Monitor and Review
IX. Hierarchy of Controls
XII. The Use of Safety Champions
The Art of Safety; for the purpose of this guide, is to help shape those who are true to the provision of proactive safety management; who are leaders, who are managers and who are workers (the 3 levels).
The Art of Safety is guidance towards the understanding of what the true workings of fundamental protection is all about. The guise of risk is there in every act, those who know this will be safe, and will bestow protection. Those who go through the motions, who duplicate others, who react after, who challenge not, who do not know their workers, are not safety leaders; let them learn the Art of Safety in all its practicable application. Those who practice such vigilance, those who pre-empt misfortune, those who challenge, those who share, will be true safety leaders.
Know your risks, and know your controls, this is the Art of Safety.
Challenge, innovate, instigate and improve, this is the Art of Safety
Learn, focus, specialise, and coach, this is the Art of Safety 2
I. Implementing Safety Management
1. Mark Donnelly said: The Art of safety management is of vital importance to the organisations success.
2. It is a matter of health, safety and wellbeing, a road either to success or to failure. Hence, it is a subject of behaviour in which by no account be neglected by anyone.
3. The art of safety, then, is governed by five constant factors to be taken into account in safety management development, when seeking to determine and establish the safety culture within the organisation.
4. These are: (1) The Commitments; (2) safety Culture; (3) Workplace Awareness; (4) The Business Leader; (5) Method and Discipline.
5. The company commitments align all within, so to be in complete agreement with the organisations leader, so that all workers will follow regardless of any other negative influences, undismayed by any unsafe acts or negative culture.
6. Safety Management signifies all that must be maintained to provide a company with its total success.
7. Workplace safety culture and awareness comprises; attitude, integrity, observing hazards and risks, noting non-conformances, reporting near misses and unsafe acts; all chances of causing ill health and injury to yourself and or to others.
8. The Organisation Leader stands for the virtues of understanding, integrity, compassion, openness and firmness.
9. By the implementation of the safety management system, it is to be understood for the organising of the workers in its proper subdivisions, the graduations of hierarchy among its workers, the maintenance of policy and procedures, by which guidance may reach the workers, and the control of company expenditure through facets of safety.
10. These five factors should be familiar to every leader and worker: those who know them will be successful; those who know them will not fail.
11. Therefore, in a continual improvement process, when seeking to determine the organisations conditions between leaders and workers, let them be made the foundation of a comparison, in this wise;
12. (1) Which of the two groups is instilled with the promotion of safety management? (2) Which of the two groups has the most ability to instil safety management? (3) With whom lie the advantages derived from safety management? (4) On which side is safety management most thoroughly enforced? (5) Which group is more able to make change? (6) Which group should be more knowledgeable in safety? (7) In which group is there the greater constancy both in reward and punishment for actions?
13. By means of these seven considerations, you can forecast a safe or an unsafe culture.
14. The leader that listens attentively to their people, and acts upon such insight, will succeed; let such a leader be retained in their position. The leader that does not listen attentively to their people, nor acts upon such insight, will suffer failure; let such one be dismissed.
15. The leader while working towards safety goals and profit of their organisation should reward themself further with any helpful situations over and beyond just ordinary safety rules and guidelines.
16. When safety morale is of a high level and incidents low, one should try to improve their safety plans and goals even further than anticipated. This is the time to promote the safety message harder.
17. All unsafe acts, hazards, near misses are born from negative perceptions and from negative culture.
18. Hence, when the leader observes unsafe acts and conditions, a leader must be ready to improve instantly; when seeing that safety is not taken serious, a leader must be forcefully active in re-educating; if the leader sees stupidity, they must rid such stupidity immediately; if they see uncertainty towards safety, they must make it very clear and concise.
19. Find unsafe officers or workers and either re-train them, or rid them. This is two options.
20. If they are strong at production, planning or management; be prepared to educate them.
21. If they still do not learn, rid them. This is no option.
22. If your safety culture is of negative temper, make haste to change. Push constantly the safety message, so that all within grow compliant, so that all will become proactive.
23. If the officers are making excuses to ignore safety, give them no respite. If their subordinates are united, separate them.
24. Educate all whenever you can, give safety direction and advice at all times, even when not planned or expected. 25. These proactive safety management traits, leading to your very organisations success, must be transparent and open.
26. Now the good leader who wins over an unsafe culture makes many observations in their workplace before the culture begins to fail. The bad leader who makes for an unsafe culture makes but few observations. Thus, many observations lead to a good safety culture, and few observations to an unsafe one: It is by proactive safety awareness to this point that you can foresee who is likely to have a good or bad safety culture, who is likely to succeed rather than to fail.
27. The Art of Safety teaches the reader to rely not on the likelihood of an unsafe act happening, but on how they are going to mitigate the unsafe act promptly; not on the exposure of an unsafe event occurring, but rather on the fact that you have made the unsafe act safe now and that your safe management system is complete and transparent at the commencement.
28. There are five negative faults which may affect a leader: (1) Negativity, which leads to poor safety leadership; (2) Non-caring attitude, which leads to loss of worker commitments; (3) closed door approach, which can limit their workplace safety understanding; (4) lack of safety knowledge, which is of vital importance to leaders confidence; (5) failing to educate, which exposes all to risks.
29. These are the five negative faults of a leader, damaging to the culture of safety, which may provoke forceful promotion of safety in the wrong context.
30. When safety in the organisation has failed and has made the organisation profit dwindle from many incidents, the cause will surely be found among these five negative faults. Let them be a subject of awakening in your safety management promotion. Let them be a learning to the leader and to all within.
II. Implementing Safety Culture
1. Mark Donnelly says; In the operation of health and safety in your organisation, where there are people, and all other items of tools and trade, the expenditure of implementing and maintaining a safety culture in such disrepair; processes, procedures, revision and continual improvement, will cost unexpected expenses. This is the cost, its expenditure, whilst mostly not tangible, will be calculated both with unseen conditions and un-noted unsafe events. Culture is a result not an action.
2. When you engage in behavioural safety, if the commitment to safety is long in coming, then your employees’ safety attitude will not improve adequately and safety implementation will be hampered. If you fail to commit to and positively promote safety, you will exhaust your safety culture and your success.
3. Again, if the safety management campaign is long-drawn-out, the profit of the business will not cover that negative culture.
4. Now, when your officers are low in safety attitude, your safety morale imperfect, your safety commitments exhausted and your profit spent, hazards that lie in waiting will spring up to take advantage of your carelessness. Then no leader, however wise, will be able to reactively avert the negative consequences that will result.
5. Thus, though all have heard of senseless over reactive and reactive methods after such damaging events, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays in developing a proactive safety culture.
6. There is no instance of an organisation having benefited from having a lax or negative safety culture.
7. It is only the true proactive safety conscious leaders, who are thoroughly acquainted with the potential negative outcomes of unsafe events that can thoroughly understand the profitable way of preventive actions.
8. The skilful leader does not increase trivial safety programs or systems; neither do they need to push the safety message via constant generic reminders.
9. Have safety with you at all times, quest it from your employees. Thus, the organisation will have a proactive safety culture, enough for its success without constant reminding.
10. Inactivity of the officers towards safety culture causes a company to be maintained by contributions from the general workers. Attempting to maintain a proactive safe culture at a distance causes the workers to be disadvantaged. Workers need managing and leadership; not from afar but near.
11. On the other hand, the personal proactive actions of the leader and officers cause profits to go up; and high profits cause employee morale to be increased, with it, less incidents and a more successful organisation.
12. When employee morale for safety culture is drained away, their safety will be afflicted by over-reactive and trivial, short term actions. 13. With this over-reactive trivial safety actions and exhaustion of officer commitment, the safety of the workers will be put at risk, their risk of being hurt will increase tenfold; while the organisations expenses for damaged equipment, worn-out tools, re-engineering of dangerous tasks, substitution of unsafe methods, controlling events with reactive administration, the hidden amount will cost many times more compared to that of the initial cost of operating a proactive safety system.
14. Hence a sensible proactive leader makes a point of searching out for, and understanding potential unsafe acts and hazards. One hazard found will prevent many dangerous events from occurring; many workers constantly looking out for hazards will prevent many more dangerous events from occurring.
15. Now in order to eliminate injuries and deaths, workers must be educated in risk; that there may be great advantage from reporting unsafe acts and hazards, they must have total understanding to the ultimate reward...protection.
16. Risk management is of vital importance for the benefit of maintaining a reporting culture.
17. Therefore in reporting hazards, when one or more hazards have been observed, those should be rewarded who alerted of such dangers. Officer’s self-interest should be substituted for those of the proactive workers. And the hazards presented shared throughout the workforce to educate all of the dangers. The proactive workers should be kindly treated and respected.
18. This is called; using the proactive safety message to enhance the organisations own strengths and successes.
19. In promoting proactive safety culture, then, let your proactive safety objective be that of zero harm, not trivial reactive safety programs.
20. Thus, let it be known that; the leader of the organisation has the overall authority of employee’s fate; the leader on what all safety depends, determines whether the organisation is unsafe or safe, succeeds or fails. The Leader, the manger, by the act of doing, will provide all that is needed to have the best end result; that of a proactive, involved and proficient safety culture.
III. Promote by Strategic Methods
1. Mark Donnelly said: In the practical art of safety management, the best thing of all is to promote a positive safety attitude at all times as a strategy; to be negative and uncaring it is not so good. So, too, it is better to promote safety in a positive way than to destroy it through negativity, confusion and inconsistency, to capture a workforce is better than to neglect them. A leader must be strategic, and be very understandable.
2. Hence to be reactive and indecisive in your promotion of safety, to not have a strategic plan is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists of educating your workforce without undue forcefulness with workable goals.
3. Thus the highest form of strategy in the organisation is to rid all negative topics; the next best is to be proactive in the promotion of safety culture; the next in order is to educate all in the workplace; the worst strategy of all is to drown the workers with trivial matters and over-reactive actions that have no higher objective than ordinary.
4. The rule is; not drown the workplace with trivial over-reactive actions if it can possibly be avoided. The preparation of posters, slogans, and various other trivial safety actions, will take up too much time; and the revision of such trivial actions will take many more months. Develop what needs to be done to enhance overall safety governance, whether it be complicated or simple in method.
5. If the naive leader, unable to control their incompetent frustrations, launches their workforce into trivial over-reactive programs, the unanticipated result is that confusion will cause more risk, while the unsafe culture still grows. Such are the disastrous effects of an over-reactive, reactive safety culture with no strategic plan.
6. Therefore the skilful leader moderates the workforce without any haste; the skilful leader captures the workers soles without laying fear onto them; they overthrow any negativity and misunderstanding without trivial reactive actions in the workplace. They set clear goals that are well thought and have a positive meaningful ending.
7. With employee’s morale still intact at the end of such a well though-out strategic plan, the skilful leader will rid the negative culture from the organisation and thus, without losing any good workers, their long term strategic achievement will be complete. This is the goal of promoting by strategic methods.
8. Plan, implement, measure and review, but never think that no plan needs continual improvement.
9. It is my rule in safety, if there are many negative employees, seek to motivate and retrain them; if only a few, educate those few; if only one, rid them; ridding one can influence many.
10. If the goal is slightly off direction, you can influence change; if moderately off, you can enforce change; if totally off, you may need to exit, before forced to do so.
11. Hence, though a constant strategic approach may be made by the leader and officers, in the end, it must be embraced by the larger workforce.
12. Now the leader is the controller of the organisation; if their control is complete in all areas and the show due diligence; the workplace will be positive; if their control is defective, the workplace will be negatively affected.
13. There are three ways in which a leader can bring misfortune upon their organisation:--
(1) By giving the workers confusing directives without achievable goals, being unaware of the fact that they do not understand. This is called; hobbling the workers through incompetence.
(2) By attempting to control the workers in the same way as they manage the organisation, being uninformed and out of touch of the true operations of the organisation. This causes confusion and doubt in the workers.
(3) By employing/promoting the officers of their workforce without insight into their safety mindset, through unawareness of the business principle of adaptation to circumstances. This shakes the confidence of the workers.
14. When the workforce is confused and distrustful, incidents are sure to come from any old-fashioned and or generalised plans. This will simply bring disorder into the workforce, and further damage safety culture. A leader must have a strategic plan for success. They must know what they want in order to complete the objective. Be it short term or long term
15. A leader must not set to many multitasking roles onto workers in any specific role, this will lower skills and increase incompetence; and then plans will fail.
16. Thus, we may know that there are five essentials for success in strategic planning: (1) Those will succeed who know when to act and when not to act. (2) Those will succeed who know how to handle both negative and positive safety attitudes. (3) Those will succeed whose workforce is energised by the same spirit of the proactive leader. (4) Those will succeed who, prepares, and understands safety in its entirety. (5) Those will succeed who have a positive strategic safety method and who is not interfered by negativity.
17. Hence my saying: "If you know the hazards and know your controls, you need not fear the result of incident; if you know hazards but not the controls, for every job gained you will also suffer an incident. If you know neither the hazard nor control, you will succumb to many incidents and you will fail"
XI. Risk Assessments
1. Mark Donnelly said; there are many ways to avert a negative event. As described; the first is to identify the hazards, the next is to analyse, next is to evaluate and last is to treat.
2. These all belong to the most important part of a safety management system; the risk assessment process.
3. The leader, who does not know the importance of risk management, will succumb too many failures.
4. There is no time better to conduct a risk assessment than the present.
5. There is no better way to be proactive in the controlling, monitoring, revising of operations at every level and in every section, than to conduct a risk assessment.
6. A risk assessment is the means to govern all negative and or positive actions.
7. A leader must consider all risks derived from activities within the organisation and determine their severity levels, this is proactive safety.
8. If an activities risk is neglected, and the severity not determined, then the leader has failed in their duty of care.
9. If an activities risk is proactively challenged, the severity determined, then the leader has fulfilled their duty of care.
10. Once a risk has been determined, the leader must allocate that risk to an owner, thus be it to themself, an officer or a worker. The risk owner must be named and must be fully aware of their obligation to control that risk and to close that risk. All must know who the risk owner is.
11. A risk maybe be compared to past knowledge, to aid in the evaluation, hence give a level of action, but this knowledge should not influence the current divergent pathway outcome. A casual way, will not give full protection. 12. If a risk is not under control of the organisation, then this is still a risk to the organisation.
13. All risks, be it internal or external, people or plant, natural or fabricated, should be put through a risk assessment process. This process could take shape in many forms, but the application is the same, (1) to find the cause and (2) to control the outcome, this is the Art of Risk Management.
14. A good leader knows their operation and knows their tasks, hence they know their risk.
15. It is by the risk assessment process, in all its proper application, that they know this.
16. Through qualitative risk assessments you can gain good understanding, and gain good measurement, this be safe in task.
17. Through quantitative risk assessment you can gain great understanding, and gain great measurement, this be safe in operation.
18. There are 5 levels of maturity to assess the level of compliance and effectiveness. (i) Emerging/ Pathological (ii) Managing/ Reactive (iii) Involving/ Calculative (iv) Co-operating/ Proactive and (v) Continually Improving/ Generative.
19. It is by these levels, a good leader can determine the controls workers might take in relation to risk.
20. If Emerging/ Pathological, then many unnecessary risks will be taken; hence safety is a problem caused by workers lack of commitment.
21. If Managing/ Reactive, then some unnecessary risks will be taken; hence Organisations and workers start to take safety seriously but there is still only action after incidents
22. If Involving/ Calculative, then few unnecessary risks will be taken; hence Safety is driven by management systems, with much monitoring and collection of data.
23. If Co-operating/ Proactive, then limited unnecessary risks will be taken; hence Safety with improved performance, the known is a challenged.
24. If Continually Improving/ Generative, then no risks will be taken; hence there is active participation at all levels. Safety is perceived to be an inherent part of the business. Safety is taken serious.
25. The journey then to a safe proactive culture, to a safe system, and to a compliant culture is this; (1) Basic (2) Reactive (3) Planned (4) Proactive (5) Resilient. 26. A good leader who knows this process, they set their strategic goals to meet these levels.
27. If the operation is vast, if complex application, then the leader must allocate an officer to manage all aspects of risk. Let this officer be devoted to the challenge.
28. To reach the final goal, to maintain the final goal, is the leaders ultimate accomplishment in their quest for protection of their workers and of their organisation.
IV. Proactive Disposition
1. Mark Donnelly said: The proactive safety leader must first put them-selves beyond the possibility of a reactive safety culture; they should be always seeking for an opportunity to find and eliminate risk. The proactive leader will have innate abilities that will see and anticipate danger at every level.
2. To protect your workers and that of others against risk is in your disposition, but the opportunity of finding hazards is provided by the understanding of your organisations practices.
3. Thus, the good leader who is skilled in safety is able to naturally safeguard a workforce against all hazards, but they cannot make certain of defeating the negative unsafe worker.
4. Hence my saying: "A leader must naturally know how to promote proactive safety without having to enforce it reactively"
5. Protection against possible incidents involves proactive safety measures; ability to make awareness of hazards means allowing adequate time to educate all of such hazards.
6. Being reactive on safety indicates an insufficient safety disposition; being proactive, means a superabundance of safety disposition.
7. The leader who is skilled in safety is naturally transparent in the most positive way; those who are skilled in proactive safety have the highest expectations. Thus on the one hand they have ability to protect the entire workforce, hence secure the success of the organisation.
8. To see safety only when it is within the current understanding of the common workers is not the acme of excellence. 9. Neither is it the acme of excellence if you promote and influence after the fact, and the whole workforce says, "Well done!"
10. To manage a past hazard is no sign of great disposition; to see the hazards after the fact is no sign of great insight; to hear the safety concerns of workers after the fact is no sign of proactive thinking or leadership.
11. What the safety industry calls a clever safety leader is one who not only proactively promoting safety, but excels in preventing incidents with ease. They are in tune with all happenings, with all operations, they are natural leaders.
12. Hence the reduction of unsafe events after the fact; bring neither reputation for knowledge or credit for leadership.
13. A true leader prevents incidents by understanding the workplace practices. Understanding the workplace practices is what establishes the certainty of success, for it means conquering hazardous events that are both already known and unknown.
14. Hence the leader puts the organisation in its entirety into a position which makes hazardous situations impossible, they do not miss the moment for eliminating any hazard.
15. Thus, it is that in safety, the competent leader only calls success after an incident free workplace and after a safety culture has been won, whereas those incompetent leaders who are destined to fail in safety first look for victory before success.
16. The ideal safety leader constantly promotes a safety culture, and strictly adheres to their innate method and discipline to maintain it; thus it is in their power to control business success, as nothing is more important in life than preserving it.
17. In respect of safety management, we have First; Measurement of hazards, Second; Estimation of consequences, Third; Calculation of losses, Fourth; Balancing of productivity, Fifth: Implementation and control of safety management systems.
18. Measurement owes its existence to Commitments; Estimation of consequences to Measurement; Calculation to Estimation of losses; Balancing of chances to productivity; and Victory to Balancing of safety systems.
19. An innate leader’s safety disposition opposed to an unnatural one; is as a life saved, a consequence averted.
20. The promotion of an innately dispositional safety leader is like the bringing back of a life after a drowning.
V. Commitment
1. Mark Donnelly said: The commitment of safety in a large workforce is the same principle as the commitment of safety of a small workforce or the same as the commitment to safety of a family: it is merely a question of giving everyone the same information and systems.
2. Managing safety in a large workforce under your control is no different in detail from managing a safety in a small one: it is merely a question of a commitment to safety.
3. To ensure that your whole workforce may understand safety and remain proactive-- this is effected by decisions both direct and indirect.
4. That the impact of your safety commitment may be likened to the wearing of a seat belt while driving, if you fail to wear a seat belt, your chances of survival are reduced.
5. In being committed to safety; a direct safety commitment may be used for training all, but indirect safety commitments will be needed in order to complete business success.
6. Indirect safety commitments, when efficiently applied, are inexhaustible as goods and services, unending as production and development; like the structure and building, they end but to begin anew; like the projects, they start, finish and then start again.
7. There are not more than six hierarchies of controls, yet the combinations of these six give rise to more barriers than can ever be covered by one.
8. There are not more than a few fall prevention systems, yet in combination they produce more protection than can ever be, if only using one.
9. There are not more than a few basic PPE requirements, yet combinations of these yield more overall protection than one can ever give alone.
10. In a proactive commitment to safety, there are not more than two methods of implementation; the direct (requirements) and the indirect (recommendations); yet these two in combination give rise to an endless series of possible preventative actions.
11. The direct and the indirect commitments lean on each other for continual improvements. It is like moving in a circle, you never come to an end. Who can exhaust the possibilities of their combination?
12. The commitments to safety are like heroes, whom motivate and elevate all to higher expectations and morals.
13. The sincerity of a commitment is like a steam engine, very powerful, and has the endurance to climb the steepest of mountains. 14. Therefore the good leader will be encouraging in their direction, and prompt in their implementation.
15. Commitments may be likened to the bending of a bow; implementing, to the releasing of the string.
16. Amid the implementation and promotion of safety, there may be seeming confusion and yet no real confusion at all; amid confusion and negativity, your constant safety commitment may be without total following, yet it will be proof against failure.
17. Commitment to safety suggests perfect conformity; proactive safety suggests knowledge; collaborating safety signifies order.
18. Promoting safety with positive commitments is simply a question of subdivision; being open, transparent and educational provides good mentoring; promoting safety with solid commitments is to be the key to the organisations success.
19. Thus, a good leader, one who is committed to keeping the workforce constantly aware of safety issues, one who drives a positive safety culture, according to which the workforce will follow. The leader must always give something, so that the workforce has something the grasp, they must give commitments.
20. By implementing commitments, a good leader keeps the workforce motivated; then when the need arises to take action against un-safe conditions, the workforce will be there always ready to assist and control.
21. The clever leader who is skilled in safety, looks to the combined effort of the workforce, and does not require too much from individuals. Hence has the right culture to minimise effort and cost through their combined effort.
22. When a leader utilises combined efforts, the workforce in itself becomes a strong proactive safety system, full of knowledge and understanding; For it is the nature of a reactive workforce to remain costly and unsafe, and to react only after an incident; if lazy and reactive, to become unsuccessful...but if dynamic and proactive, to succeed.
23. Thus the energy developed by a committed leader who is skilled in safety, through their commitments has an organisation filled with proactive safety conscience workers. This is why a constant effort is needed to promote commitments and thus promote safety as most paramount.
VI. Clever and Naive
1. Mark Donnelly said: Whoever is clever in safety and eliminates hazards from the organisation will be prepared for a successful operation; whoever is naive and who is reactive will fail in operation.
2. Therefore a clever leader, who is skilled in safety, positively enforces safety onto their workforce, and does not allow any negative actions to be imposed on them.
3. By promoting clever safety measures into the organisation, the leader can cause the workforce to follow of their own accord; or, by inflecting clever change, they can make it impossible for negative culture to develop or grow.
4. If the workplace is losing its safety culture, the clever leader can promote it; if the workforce has naive employees, the clever leader can manipulate those; if the workforce is un-manipulated, the clever leader can rid those from the workforce.
5. Target hazards which the business must hasten to control; move fast to find hazards that are not generally known or expected, this is clever.
6. An organisation may work safely for many years without major incident through luck; a clever organisation works safely though constant effort.
7. You can be sure of succeeding in your promotion of safety if you promote clever safety throughout the organisation. You can ensure the safety of your workforce if you have clever safety officers that cannot be naively influenced by others.
8. Hence, the clever safety leader is skilful in managing safety even when the workforce does not fully know what to look out for or implement; they are skilful in protecting all those who are not safe by nature. They are clever at targeting areas in need of improvement.
9. O divine art of proactive safety! Through you we learn to be clever, through you we become smart; and hence we can hold the successful advantage in our hands over all opposition.
10. You may be safe and be absolutely successful if you target unsafe and high risk areas; you will be clever and incident free if your actions have been cleverly implemented before they became an incident.
11. If you wish to be naive towards safety, the organisation can be forced into a negative culture that will sure bring failure and result in injury or even death. As a clever leader, you need to always think of safety and seek out those hidden hazards that will cause unfortunate events. This is the art of safety.
12. If you do not wish to have unfortunate incidents, you can prevent hazards from becoming incidents even though not all hazards are known. All you need do is educate the workforce on how to find and observe possible hazards before they undertake any task. This is the making of a clever workforce.
13. By discovering and understanding hazards at the workplace, you can keep your incidents at zero.
14. You can form a clever safety culture, while naive ones fail in theirs. Hence there will be an advantage, which means that you shall succeed and they will fail.
15. And if you are able thus to succeed through clever safety initiatives, your competitors will be naively left to fight over what work is left that you could not do.
16. The hazardous areas you intend to target in your business must be made known; for then the workforce will be ready to acknowledge your safety commitments; and they will discuss amongst themselves your safety commitment, everyone will be clever and proactively talking about safety, then the task of creating a clever safety culture is not done by a few, but by all.
17. For should the chance to allow anyone part of the organisation to be naive, you have allowed a gap in your commitments for unsafe conditions to appear. If you focus too much on one area of your business, other areas may get neglected, hence you have allowed unsafe conditions to develop; they will become incidents, this is not being clever. All areas and subdivisions must be treated the same, regardless of any factor.
18. Negative culture comes from allowing parts of the workforce to be naive; clever safety management comes from convincing your workforce to constantly think about safety.
19. Knowing where all hazards and hi-risk areas are, you can manage and control them before they become an unwanted event.
20. But if neither hazards nor hi-risk areas be known, then you have given up your guard and have allowed for your workforce to be naive, thus opened up the gaps for unsafe acts and conditions to occur.
21. Though according to your current focus on maintaining a high level of clever safety systems, this shall be advantageous to your organisation. I say then that long term success will be achieved.
22. Though the hazards and hi-risk areas be in great numbers, you may prevent them from becoming an unwanted event by being clever. Prepare all so as to control these risky areas and reduce the consequence of unwanted events from occurring through promotion and education. This is the key to becoming clever.
23. If the hazard is a naive person, then learn the principle of their activity or inactivity. Force them to commit to safety so as to find out their naive principles. Once you know their naive principles you can be clever to manipulate them.
24. Carefully compare the attitude of your officers with that of your own values, so that you may know where leadership is clever and where leadership is naive.
25. In the making of clever safety officers, the highest pitch you can attain is to support them; promote your safety commitments and values onto them, and you will be safe from the naive attitudes, you will be free from the unsafe work practices that cause harm and failure.
26. How your success may be shaped is from your clever safety officers, this is what will determine how the whole workforce will collaborate. This is how the whole organisation will become clever.
27. All workers should see the safety systems a clever leader uses, whereby they make safety a priority; all workers should see the safety systems, out of which success is evolved.
28. Always improve on safety tactics which have improved a lax process, but let your improvements always be proactively instigated by your company’s variety of working conditions.
29. Clever safety culture is like fertilizer to a fruit tree; A fruit tree with no fertilizer will bear sour and bitter fruit.
30. So in developing and maintaining a clever safety culture, the way to succeed is to reward those who are proactive and to provide to those whom are inactive.
31. A clever safety culture shapes its course according to the safety commitments of the leader and officers that work under the leader; the clever leader works out their success in relation to the officers whom they have entrusted their safety commitments and visions onto.
32. Therefore, just as workplace officers are diverse in their thinking, there are no exact actions that are constant.
33. The officers, who can modify their attitude in relation to their leader, will succeed and may be called a natural born and proficient follower and leader of the 3rd level. 34. The six hierarchies of controls (Elimination, Substitution, Isolation, Engineering, administration, PPE) are not always equally enforced; the 3 levels of structure make way for each other in turn. There are good days and bad; organisation has its periods of highs and lows. As clever leaders, officers and workers, who are skilled in the art of safety, they need to understand that cycles come and go, that by staying focused and committed to the safety commitments, and who have clear and achievable goals, they will succeed.
VII. Development of Policy and Procedure
1. Mark Donnelly said; in business, the officers receive their safety direction from the leader. The workers receive their direction from the officers; they all check their action from the leaders’ commitments.
2. Having collected committed and proactive safety minded officers and after making safety commitments, the leader must manage and control the different facets of the organisation to ensure safety is continuously upheld.
3. After that, comes implementing various safety policy and procedures, to which there is nothing more important to an organisation. The difficulty of developing safety procedures consists in turning the unknown into the known, the unsafe into safe, then making these recognisable to all.
4. Thus, to take a quick and committed direction, after re-educating or ridding negative workers, and through the understanding of safety culture; to rid all hazards before they become incidents shows great knowledge of procedural development.
5. Developing a safety procedure within a workforce in a disciplined manner is advantageous; being undisciplined to your procedure, most disadvantageous.
6. If you have to push procedures onto your organisation in order to develop a safe method way, the chances are that you will be too late. On the other hand, to constantly develop procedures from the start in all areas of your workplace collectively, over time, all will improve in safer techniques.
7. If you force too many minor procedures into every aspect of your workplace and onto all workers, and or make for too big of a document, the system will fail as the directions will be either limited or to great and the purpose of the procedure methodology then be too unclear.
8. A good procedure will be followed, the poor one will not, and on this direction you have allowed for segmented failures, that ultimately have one ending; a failure.
9. If you develop and implement a procedure, it must be clear and easy understood, you must use terms all can understand. It must be in process order.
10. If you develop and implement a procedure and it is not clear and easy to understand, and the process not practicable, then the direction will not be followed, and the mythology of the procedure process lost.
11. You cannot develop a procedure without the consultation of all involved.
12. The procedure will not fit into the real operation unless all are familiar with the process and how it is worded and to this its importance. A procedure must leave no questions, and have no confusing grey areas.
13. The workgroup will be unable to reach a safe ending if the procedure is lacking it detail and guidance.
14. In the development of procedures, practice accuracy and target your audience and you will succeed.
15. Whether to allow for deviations to the procedure or not, must be decided by unforeseen circumstances.
16. Let your deviation be that of policy, your quality that of a plan
17. Let you plans be open and transparent, when implemented, followed like a commitment.
18. The leader will succeed who knows the importance of policy and procedure; such is the art of safety management.
19. The basic principles of communication say; within the organisation, management plans are not heard, hence policy and procedures; nor can the leaders thinking be guessed, hence their commitments.
20. Commitment, plans, policies, and procedures are means whereby the entire organisation can have a goal and directive. A means to gain knowledge.
21. The leader thus forms one single united safety minded group, it is therefore almost impossible for hazards to become incident. This is the art of leading.
22. When conducting complex tasks, make much use of procedures, when conducting new tasks, make much use of guidelines to direct the unknowing to the knowing
23. A whole organisation may be low in morale; a leader may be confused in their direction. But the procedures will remain and be the map.
24. Now workers integrity is at best in the morning, by midday it has begun to drop, in the mid afternoon it has all but gone, their mind is on the end of day.
25. A clever leader then knows to promote their policies early, and audits late when integrity is low; this is the art of effective management.
26. Disciplined and in control, to see the visions and values in action amongst the organisation; this is the art of governance.
27. To have high level safety procedures, while others are in disrepair and of poor quality; this is the art of consultation.
28. To listen to your stakeholders, the ones that support your goals; this is the art of communication.
29. Such is the Art of Safety
IIIX. Forcefulness of Safety
1. Mark Donnelly said: In safety, the officers receive their commands from the leader, they then direct their workers, and promote safety as if a division of the company. If promotion is not taken, then it must be forced upon.
2. When the workers are in low safety morale, do not forgo these constant safety aspects. (1) In low safety moral where many are in pessimism about safety, support those that are positive. Do not allow for poor safety culture to spread. (2) In very bad safety cultures, you must resort to forceful safety management. (3) In extremely bad safety cultures, you must enforce severe disciplinary action. This is the forcefulness of safety management.
3. There are risks that must not be taken, tasks which must be not conducted, workers which must not be overwhelmed, decisions which must not be contested, pressures of the business which must not be relaxed.
4. The leader who thoroughly understands the advantages that accompany forcefulness of safety knows how to handle their workforce in such lax times.
5. The leader, who does not understand these, may be well acquainted with the safe operation of the organisation, yet they will not be able to turn their knowledge to practical safety directives.
6. So, the Leader and officers who are uneducated in the Art of Safety, in the art of forceful safety in extreme environments, even though they be familiar with the five safety factors, will fail to make safe their workers in such despair.
7. Hence in the leader's plans, considerations of positive and of negative safety will be blended together.
8. If the expectation of success be moulded in this way, the leader may succeed in accomplishing the essential part of forceful safety.
9. If, on the other hand, in the midst of bad safety management the leader is not ready to improve through forceful safety, they will open the organisation to extreme consequences.
10. The Leader must reduce the chance of a failing safety management system by constantly reviewing all policy and procedure; and make improvements to them, and keep them constantly revised; and to make new ones, and implement them cleverly. And In desperate times, forcefully promote them.
IIX. Monitor and Review
1. Mark Donnelly said: We come now to the question of monitoring safety and understanding the consequences in lacking a proactive culture through revision. Control all risks, and know all hazards, thus you will succeed.
2. Lead from the top, be open. Do not expect employees to lead safety.
3. After the learning of a hazard, one must do everything to eliminate it in haste.
4. When safety negative employees are careless in their actions, do not wait for a later time to interact, it is best to engage promptly, and re-educate swiftly, than to ignore.
5. If you are anxious to act swiftly, do not wait for more than a day to pass before you engage the employees.
6. Use their unsafe acts as an example for them all to learn from, educate all on the worst case consequences.
7. In finding damaged equipment, your action should be to repair or replace before the equipment is used again. 8. If forced to use this equipment, you should use other safety controls, educate and slow down operations.
9. If there is risk to the environment, seek environmental education and use appropriate controls.
10. These are the useful guides of reviewing and monitoring which will enable the leader to maintain a good safety system and a positive safety culture.
11. All successful leaders prefer proactive actions to reactive ones, and the revision and monitoring of such actions will keep a leader in control of risk.
12. If you are respectful to your employees, and provide practical safety knowledge, the collective workforce will be free from hazards, for they will monitor also.
13. When you have a new employee, inaugurate them wisely, monitor their progress and review them after a period. Thus you will be acting for the benefit of all your employees.
14. When, in midst of an incident investigation, be sure to review all findings before rushing in with controls.
15. Organisations in which is there is no method of monitor or review, whom have complacent workers, uncaring workers, disgruntled workers, old school workers, then constant monitoring and revision needs to be applied at all times.
16. While a leader may tend to not react hastily to such a bad safety culture, when given opportunities; such as meetings, they should always review safety and then monitor the controls.
17. If in implementation of controls, there be any workers who are naive, they must be known and understood; for these naive workers are incidents in waiting.
18. When the naive worker does not monitor controls, the worker is always going to be a risk to all.
19. When the naive worker keeps aloof and disregards safety revision, they are naive of the chance of causing great consequence.
20. If the officers are incompetent, then they are fostering unsafe culture by not reviewing and monitoring for which actions would be derived.
21. Positive reviewing and monitoring of safety practices shows to all; the business is being proactive. 22. The continual identification of already identified hazards is a sign of poor reviewing and monitoring. Failing to monitor actions means that an incident is imminent.
23. When there is a rise in hazards, it is a sign of a major failure approaching; when there is a rise in near misses, it is is a sign of a coming incident, these are to pointing towards a process lacking in revision.
24. Continual monitoring will raise issues that can be stopped. No monitoring will fail to raise issues and will give way to unwanted events.
25. When revision is active and timely, then issues can be resolved. This is a process that aids in learning.
26. Safety management without revision and monitoring using documented processes does not give trace to your efforts.
27. When there is incident from casual factors, then much over reactive action ensues.
28. When there is incident form formal factors, then less over reactive action ensues.
29. When safety culture is of low morale, then the workers have no goals.
30. When hazards are not being reported, then maturity is of low scale.
31. When workers do not act in improvement by way of monitoring and revision then for sure a failure will ensue.
32. If failures are low, then monitoring of practices is in good repair, if failures are often then monitoring of practices is of poor repair.
33. If the workforce is lax in their revision of practices, then the leaders monitoring is weak. If the actions are never reviewed, then negligence is riff.
34. When the organisation forgives to production over safety, when the officers do not commit to revision and monitoring, showing they have lost their drive in safety, then you must know as the leader that you business is failing in safety.
35. The hearing of rumours and speculation amongst your workforce in negative morale, points to a bad safety culture and lack of monitoring.
36. To frequent of revision for being that of safe, signify that the workers are at the end of their tether. Too infrequent involvement to review and monitor by the leaders and officers will result in failure.
37. To promote safety after the predicable end is forthcoming, after nil action, after no revision, after nil monitoring, will show supreme lack of leadership skill. 38. If your highly motivated workers are in extreme less numbers than that of the lax workers, only means that the safety culture has not been monitored. All you can do is wait hope for no serious event to end your run.
39. The proactive and proficient leader, who revises and monitors their activities at every level, though be it through great officers, is sure to ward off any failure.
40. If the leader advertises their safety commitments derived from revision and monitoring, the workforce will be always proactive in the actions, their moral will be high, their drive to reach goals strong, and their integrity in high array.
41. Therefore the leader must be involved, and be connected, though be in also through their officers, this will be the road to success.
42. If the leader is distant, rarely involved in revision, the workforce will begin to fail
43. If the leader shows their safety commitments towards revision and monitoring, and the workers show theirs, then the gain will be that of total business success.
IX. Hierarchy of Controls
1. Mark Donnelly said: We may distinguish six kinds of controls: (1) Elimination; (2) Substitution; (3) Isolation; (4) Engineering; (5) administration; (6) Personal Protective Equipment.
2. Elimination of risks in the workplace is of best practice.
3. With regard to serious hazards of those needed to be eliminated, action these with timely manner, and educate your workers of these. Then you will be proactive in ridding these risks altogether.
4. Risks that cannot be eliminated which still need to be undertaken, should be done using the others controls, you must work down the list, PPE being the last resort.
5. From this mindset, if the hazard is controlled and made acceptable, the task may continue. But if the hazard has not controlled and is not made acceptable, and you fail to control the hazard in any other way, then, incidents will ensue.
6. When the risk owner is unsure of what hierarchy of control to use, then the risk owner is unsure of the worst case consequence.
7. In a position of this sort, even though the hazard may seem low risk, it will be advisable not to continue, but rather to step back and rethink, thus enabling the full consequence to be fully understood; then, when the hazard is fully understood, the risk owner can then use the appropriate control measures to mitigate that risk.
8. With regard to inexperienced workers, if you can train them on these controls, you will let them be strongly prepared and you will eliminate the advent of the incident occurring. This then the top level of control.
9. Should the consequence be serious and prevents you from conducting the task; do not decide to try your luck; do not rely on probability or likelihood.
10. With regard to naive employees, if the leader is early with their recognition of these controls, they should have instilled a proactive safety mindset; there should be no disregard to the leader’s commitment to safety.
11. If the naive employee does not respect the leaders commitment to control risk, do not ignore them, but re-educate and try to give them better understanding of the consequences of their inactions and the controls available to them.
12. If the leader is located away from the task, and the workforce is not fully trained in these hierarchies of controls, it will not be easy to prevent incident, and implementing reactive controls will not be adequate.
13. These six hierarchies of controls are connected with a successful organisation. The Leader who has attained a responsible position must be prepared to study them and know them.
14. Now a workforce is always exposed to risks; not arising just from unknown factors, but from faults for which the leader is responsible. These faults are: (1) insensible; (2) noncompliant; (3) neglectful; (4) uncaring; (5) disorganised; (6) confused.
15. Other conditions being equal, if one hazard is allowed against untrained employees, the result will be the insensibility of the employees.
16. When the employees are too negative and their officers too weak, the result is general noncompliance. When the officers are too stringent and the common worker too naive, the result is failure.
17. When the officers are angry and insubordinate, and on meeting the naive give battle on their own account from a feeling of resentment, before the leader can tell whether or not they are in a position to resolve, the result is loss. When the leader is weak and without authority; when their commitments are not clear and distinct; when there are no fixed controls assigned to tasks, and the instructions are formed in a careless random manner, the result is utter disorganisation. 18. When a Leader, unable to estimate the hazard consequence, allows for inferior mitigation of risk, or mitigates with a wrong control, and neglects to place the right person in control, the result must be failure.
19. These are six ways of courting defeat, which must be carefully noted by the risk owner who has attained a responsible position.
20. The correct application of any hierarchy of control is the leader’s best ally; but a power of estimating the hazard, of controlling the risk, and of accurately calculating difficulties, dangers and efforts, constitutes the test of a great leader.
21. The leader who knows these things, and in application puts their knowledge into practice, will succeed. Those who knows them not, nor practices them, will surely fail.
22. If controlling risk is sure to result in victory, then you must mitigate risk at all costs.
23. The leader who controls risk without wanting recognition and admits they are wrong without fearing humiliation, whose only thought is to protect their people and do good service for their organisation, is the master leader to which others should aspire.
24. The leader, who regards their workers as most valuable, will have full trust amongst their workers; look upon them as your own beloved ones and they will stand by you and respect your position.
25. If, however, the leader is generous, unable to make their authority felt; kind-hearted, but unable to enforce their commitments; and incapable, moreover, of controlling risks: then the workers are subject to failure.
26. If the workers are competent in using hierarchy of controls, but don’t address observed hazards, then risk management is not fully conducted.
27. If the workers know the observed hazards, but are unaware of what controls to use, then risk management is not fully promoted.
28. If the workers know the hazard, and also know how to mitigate the risks through hierarchy of controls, but are aware of unseen potential hazards, then risk management is fully promoted.
29. Hence the experienced, competent and safety consciences worker who knows controls, once undertaking a task, is never bewildered; once they have finished the task, they are never at a loss.
30. Hence my saying: "If you know the hazards and know your controls, you need not fear the result of incident; if you know hazards but not the controls, for every job gained you will also suffer an incident. If you know neither the hazard nor control, you will succumb too many incidents and you will fail"
XII. The Use of Safety Champions
1. Mark Donnelly said; the developing of a negative safety culture, of that of a few, to many workers and ordering them to do unsafe work entails heavy loss on the workers and is a drain on the resources of the organisation. The expenditure to the organisation will amount exponential losses. There will be confusion at work and abroad, and workers will suffer from many injuries. Many families will be impeded in these losses.
2. Workers in organisation may face many unacceptable risks for years, though all wanting to go home as they arrived at work, fit and able. This being so, to remain unaware of the potential hazards, simply because the organisation dreads the outlay of a mature safety system, is the height of failing to meet their duty of care.
3. The leader who fails in their due diligence is no leader of an organisation, no controller of their requirement, no successful leader.
4. Thus, what enables a smart leader and the good officers to help manage safety and succeed, and achieve a proactive safety culture within, is the implementation of safety champions.
5. Now the use of safety champions cannot replace the leader’s obligation, nor relax their commitments, this level of commitment can only come from the top.
6. Learning’s and observations can be obtained from many committed workers
7. Hence the use of safety champions, of which there are 3 levels; (1) new workers (2) experienced workers (3) competent workers
8. When these three levels of workers are acting as a team, this is what I call "synergised onsite safety". It is the organisations most valuable tool in maintaining pure safety.
9. Having safety champions means owning many safety officers within the organisation.
10. Having new workers as safety champions; are naive to common workings and test practices.
11. Having experienced workers as safety champions; bestows knowledge to assist naive workers with answers and direction. 12. Having competent workers as safety champions; grant the ability to offer practical solutions and inform the officers of divergent methods.
13. Hence, it is that these levels combined as a team in which the leader, officers and all workers can trust on their health and safety. They should be respected and acknowledged for their contributions. The organisation should always repay their observations with gratitude.
14. Workers can be Safety Champions if they have great innate safety sagacity.
15. They can be proactive without the leader or officers influences or directions, and with those being near.
16. Without this innate safety sagacity, the safety champion may not fulfil their obligation of protection. A safety champion must be rightfully chosen.
17. Be respectful, be respectful and use your safety champions to everyone’s advantage.
18. If any form of information is raised by a safety champion that is of valid concern, it must be accepted as important and action must be forthcoming.
19. Whether it be via documentation or direct consultation, the leader or officers should thank the identifier and the team, and advertise the safety issue to all within the organisation. Safety champions must be initiated to reduce risk.
20. Any negative workers, who see the positive acknowledgement of the safety champion, may wish to forgo their safety negativity and strive to become the next safety champion. Thus even without this title, they will be safety conscience at all times while leading up to their chance.
21. It is through the leaders’ acknowledgement of a job well done by the once negative worker that those will quickly aid in the guidance and development of other new future safety champions.
22. It is owing to the safety champions, that the hazards and unsafe conditions be removed and that the organisation has full compliance and success.
23. Lastly, it is by the proactive actions provided, that the learnings be used many times over.
24. The ultimate goal of having safety champions at all levels, is the leaders total commitment to protecting their organisation in all its entirety; the workers, the families, the friends, the future. All workers knowing this will become safety champions, with or without the title. 25. The organisation may be old, or maybe young, it maybe solid or it maybe week. But with safety, your organisation will always be successful.
26. Hence it is the smart leader, the smart officers, the smart workers and all safety champions, with or without title who will achieve the best result possible.
27. People are the leaders best asset, safety is the highest aspiration...this is the art of Safety
If safety is, the most important thing we can own, the most important thing we can educate, the most important thing we can do, the most important thing to life itself, then why do we then not embrace it as the most valuable mechanism we have at our disposal. All of us have access to safety, but many prefer only to have access to it in hindsight.
Mark Donnelly