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How to Assess the Health of Your Safety Management System
And what you can do to improve it
We live in a world of systems. The system we should be most familiar with is our body, which requires multiple systems and groups of organs working together to support life. When it comes to protecting the lives of employees from the daily hazards they face, a system with interconnected elements working in concert with one another is required. This collection of interconnected elements is what forms an organization’s safety management system – the foundation for preventing injury and illness, and a component of a resilient safety culture. Each organization’s safety management system varies based on the type of work being performed and the associated risks, but the framework of most contains:
- A policy statement identifying the organization’s overall commitment to injury prevention.
- Objectives of the safety management system, along with identifying how those objectives will be met through defined responsibilities and accountabilities at each level of the organization.
- Documentation of the various procedures, programs, and safety activities used to effectively identify hazards and then mitigate and manage those risks.
- Ongoing monitoring and measuring the effectiveness of the system, often referred to as safety assurance.
- Training and communication to execute the elements of the safety management system and capture feedback.
When your safety system isn’t producing the results you desire, it’s incumbent upon leaders to assess its health. Ask yourself these questions to help you gain insights into the health of your current safety management system.
Focus — What and Whom is the Safety System Focused On?
Does your system focus on achieving perfection? Is the overriding metric of success of the system determined by your recordable injury frequency rate? If you answered yes to either, you may be experiencing (perhaps unknowingly) underreporting of injuries due to the intense focus leaders have on achieving a lower injury rate. This mindset trickles all the way down to frontline employees and can lead to fear of reporting injuries, near misses, and tasks where high risk exposures exist.
Tip
- The safety system should enable employees and leaders on the front lines to analyze, identify, report and address hazards on the job, with increased focus on potential high-risk activities that could lead to serious injuries and fatalities. Identifying hazards and ensuring appropriate safeguards or controls are in place when – not if – someone makes a mistake should be the primary objective of the system.
Effectiveness – How effective is the safety system?
How well are your policies, procedures, safeguards, training, technologies, and reporting processes understood and followed by workers and leaders? Accountability for working safely requires each level of the organization to know what the expectations are, be equipped to meet the expectations, be measured on their performance, and receive feedback in the form of positive recognition or coaching. If the elements of your safety management system aren’t consistently applied across your organization, you can expect inconsistent results. Consistent application is a leadership function.
Does your system support a learning and improving culture? The procedures that govern safe work should not be viewed as static, but dynamic. “Work as planned,” through documentation of safe work practices, may differ from “work as done.”
Tips
- Getting out and learning what constraints, challenges, and error traps your employees face to accomplish their work is critical to the continuous improvement of the safety system. Learn from those closest to the hazards and improve the system.
- Evaluate your system against industry and international safety management standards. Doing this can identify weaknesses within your processes and increase organizational resilience.
Support — How is the safety system supported?
Do your leaders champion and drive adherence to the safety management system through their words and actions? You can’t talk your way into establishing and sustaining a culture of safety without “walking the talk.” That means providing the staffing, budget, equipment, engineering controls, and training necessary in ensuring a safe place to work, while personally demonstrating the safe behaviors you want to sustain.
Does safety have a seat at the leadership table? At the leadership level, the more filtered the realities of what is happening (good or bad) where the work is being done, the less likely leaders are to respond in a way that connects to and makes a difference to employees.
Tip
- As the leader goes, so goes the rest of the organization. When leaders, at all levels, demonstrate that safety is a value through their frequent and positive participation in safety activities, employees will feel that they are supported in the pursuit of safe production.
Perception — How does the workforce perceive the safety system?
How do employees perceive the system? Is it possible that leadership’s perception might differ from theirs? How safety is managed can be perceived in any of the following ways with the associated outcomes:
- Command and Control = Fear and Underreporting
- Complaint and Confusion = Apathy and Disengagement
- Care and Coaching = Trust and Engagement
Which of these three characterize how employees perceive your system? What data do you have to understand how your system is perceived?
Tip
- There are many ways you can learn about your workforce perceptions, ranging from simple tools like using “learning questions” to capture qualitative data during informal conversations, to more rigorous instruments that provide quantitative data, such as a safety perception survey. Whatever you use to gauge perception, the most important consideration is that it provides meaningful and actionable data that you are prepared to act on through strategic improvements.
Your safety management system provides order and structure, while providing confidence that hazards are being identified and the associated risks are being mitigated and managed. Without a system, you’re relying on hope and luck. But just because you have a system in place doesn’t mean you can sit back and expect people to operate perfectly within it. The system needs to be constantly assessed for effectiveness. The most effective systems are part of a culture with a shared mindset that meets challenges with care and curiosity, in which leaders that demonstrate consistent behaviors that positively influence others to work safe, and where a fully engaged workforce is focused on continuous improvement to build ownership of the system.
Just as you sometimes need a professional to help with your personal health, you might also benefit from a professional’s help assessing the health of your organization’s safety system. Caterpillar Safey Services has supported customers for decades in transforming their safety cultures and making them more resilient. To learn more about how our experts can support assessing the health of your system and building a strategy toward a more resilient safety culture, contact us and visit cat.com/safety for more information.
Zach Knoop
General Manager, Caterpillar Safety Services
Zach Knoop served as a Director of Corporate Safety for a Fortune 500 company that was a customer of Caterpillar Safety Services before he joined Caterpillar. He’s served in roles from consultant to account management prior to leading this team. You can follow Zach on LinkedIn.
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