Latest from Greg Smith, author of Paper Safe:
Hi everyone. Apologies that I have been so inactive on LinkedIn lately, but I have been busy trying to finalise my next book – Reasonably Practicable: cases and commentary, which is designed to help safety managers understand all the elements which go into demonstrating whether health and safety measures meet the reasonably practicable test.
However, I could not help but notice the increase in posts arguing for and against “safety differently”. With that in mind, I want to share a short video I put together a while ago.
Legally speaking, it does not matter “how” you do safety, rather, does your approach to safety achieve the outcome of a safe workplace – which is not measured by injury rates, by the way.
We need to stop talking about methodologies, and start having a meaningful discussion about creating a narrative around whether safety management is effective.
Hauzan Kamil says
We can use many different approaches toward safety implementation for the workplace. Even though we have the same target, i.e. zero accident. For me, it had better to make this simple.
I prefer to use simple approach to implement effective safety method.
Rob Long says
Greg, a lot packed in there.
I think it is important to understand the difference between a methodology (philosophy) and a method (the outcome of that philosophy). eg. zero as a philosophy drives a method of brutalism. Any narrative emerges from a methodology.
We also need to be careful that we don’t confuse slogans with methods. You can have all the good intent in the world and express that in as many slogans as you like, but none of it is a method.
Then of course there is the subjective analysis of what it means to be ‘effective’, especially when none of the current delusional measurements are indicative of effectiveness.
The reason why many of these methods are delusional is because they don’t really know what their methodology is.
Then there is also the necessity of including an ethic of risk in effectiveness because a dehumanizing method with give a dehumanizing outcome, that is not effective because it is unethical.
A safe workplace is deemed so by a combination of many subjective factors that require clarification according to a driving methodology. If people are brutalised under the slogan or zero or any other slogan then its lack of ethics deems it ineffective.