Article by Phil LaDuke on his blog: https://philladuke.wordpress.com/
Phil says: If we focus too much on the moral “correctness” of worker safety we risk losing credibility with the business community. Safety has to be more than a quasi-religion. In this week’s post I explore the rise of the safety theocracy.
The Rise of the Safety Theocracy
“You’d be surprised at how many companies don’t care about losing money”—A colleague when I showed him my presentation and case studies demonstrating my ability to lower companies’ injury costs by millions of dollars.
A few years back I figured out a way to automatically notify companies of lockout violations as they were happening; I was understandably excited…think of the implications! Think of the lives that will be saved! Think of the money I will make! I soon realized that nobody cared. Fast forward and you find me shilling a safety solution that had a proven track record of lowering the cost of injuries by an average of $2.5 million a year only to find myself summarily dismissed because of a lack of sales—again because nobody seemed that interested in saving money by lowering the cost of injuries.
I was telling these stories to a colleague of mine who responded with the opening quote. To some improving safety performance to save money is seen as crass, as tacky, and as well…immoral. To be sure improving safety so that no one gets hurt and everyone gets to go home and to continue to enjoy life (well at least as much as they did before going to work. I was married to a nagging shrew of a woman and frankly going home after work wasn’t the height of fine living, but after 26 years of blissful post-divorce bachelorhood I can honestly say that even life with her—such as it was—was better than dying at work or living with her as a cripple (the Bette Davies/Joan Crawford classic Whatever Happened To Baby Jane immediately springs to mind, but as so often the case, I digress) is a laudable goal, but to some it runs deeper.
Some people seem to believe that equating safety with business costs somehow cheapens the goal of keeping people safe, as if saving money lessens the nobility of reducing workplace injuries. This proselytizing of safety frankly, is getting out of hand. Why can’t we do the right thing and also make a buck doing so? What is it about quantifying the savings associated with reduced injuries that is, in so many people’s minds, vulgar, distasteful, and wrong?
Until we manage safety like a business element it will remain a quasi-religious movement where decisions are made based on philosophical platitudes versus basic management techniques. Approaching safety on moral grounds is doomed; creating the cult of safety where we perpetuate superstition simply because we want to believe it rather than based on research and facts means we create a sort of safety theocracy where charlatans and gurus dictate how we run our businesses.
Do you have any thoughts? Please share them below