SAFETITUDE TRAINING AND CONSULTANCY

“Safety is a priority” is probably most practiced slogan and many organisational leaders feel pride mentioning it while speaking on safety. You can see slogans, posters and publicity materials with this slogan. But, you will surprise when it is told to you that safety should not be a priority. You may or may not agree but fact is that it should never be. You know, we in our personal and professional life, set many agenda/activity and prioritize them as per situation and need. Sometimes, a task at priority number 1 on a particular day get shifted at last on another day and like so. I mean to say, our priority of a task keep on changing with the changing circumstances. But, is it so with value? Certainly NO. From the childhood, we have been taught not to compromise with value and as adult value become our integral part of life. We never change our value even in an adverse situation. Therefore, Poor safety performance is surely a result of our understanding of safety –a priorit...

In the series of paradigm shifts in Safety, today I would like you reader to transform safety from a situation of Fault-finding (blame game) to Fact-finding (feedback game).   Raising fingers on an individual or a team for injury situation may not help an organisation bringing down the number of injuries. Instead, a near miss or injury should be looked upon as an opportunity to gather facts from all systems that probably have role to play in causing an accident. Here I say you to consider all contributory factors related to behaviour (bad SAFETITUDE), person (incompetency) or environment (unsafe condition) as well. We miss many contributory causes because we investigate the accidents for finding the single cause i.e. root cause.   Thus evaluation of injury in process of Accident Investigation remains incomplete because we get very less information than they could be. In fact, to learn more about the inputs for injury prevention, we need to approach the task with a dif...

Here, I would present the difference in between conventional safety and BBS. It is important to understand here that conventional safety approach need not to be discarded straight way but should be reviewed whether they are adding value in reducing the injury. Technological advancement in every area of human endeavour has multiplied the complexity in the process which in turn has increased the safety challenges many folds. To tackle the newer challenges, BBS is an transformational tools that roots SAFETITUDE deep in workers mind and motivate them to behave in a safe way. See, what BBS is and what isn't in the below table: Is Isn’t Achievement-oriented Failure-oriented Fact finding Fault finding Proactive Reactive Process Outcome Upstream approach Downstream approach Actively caring Passively caring Interdependent Independent ...

Attitude is all about what we intend to do with and what we receive as consequence following that. When it comes to safety, it plays a vital role in our life no matter where we are - at home, at road, in water, in air or in factory. In all above situations, we encounter with danger(s) to our life or limb while performing an activity. Therefore, every one of us needs to behave in a safe way with right safety attitude within us very first time and every successive time. Here, Safeti-tude integrating Safety & Attitude together called Safetitude, works as an antecedent in every situation and influence human beings to behave in a certain way for protection from the dangers he or she encounters with. The very old truth that “Accidents do not happen, they are caused” is probable outcome of an individual’s behaviour-at-risk, which in turn is influenced by one’s attitude. In any business activity or human endeavour, one’s such behaviour invites woe ranging from a little amount of p...

One of the most critical issues now a days in  Occupational Health Safety (OHS) is bad indoor air quality (IAQ) in densely  populated offices.  IAQ greatly depends on air changes rate per hour in work offices. Here is details of it. Air changes per hour , or　 air change rate , abbreviated as ACH or ac/h, is a measure of the air volume added to or removed from a space (normally a room or house) divided by the volume of the space. If the air in the space is either uniform or perfectly mixed, air changes per hour is a measure of how many times the air within a defined space is replaced. In many air distribution arrangements, air is neither uniform or perfectly mixed. The actual percentage of an enclosure's air which is exchanged in a period depends on the airflow efficiency of the enclosure and the methods used to ventilate it. The actual amount of air changed in a well mixed ventilation scenario will be 63.2% after 1 hour and 1 ACH. In ...

Total Safety Culture requires all operational persons involvement including outsourced contractual workers. In fact these are the persons who know where safety hazards are located and when at-risk behaviours (ARBs) occur. They are the key persons to promote safe behaviours (SBs) and correcting ARBs and conditions. In developing such kind of safety culture, it should be supported from top but driven from the bottom. This is more than the employee participation; it is employee ownership, commitment, and empowerment which improve safety performance through accident reduction. Safety should never be controlled from top and they should not enforce people to achieve the goals set in terms of lag indicator like reducing the LTIs. In this situation people “work to avoid failure” than “work for achievement”. So let’s innovate a mechanism to involve all level workers in deciding what they together want to achieve in safety rather than non-workers (supervisors) think what to be a...

Accident Investigation is a common practice in Industrial Safety Management and Safety Professionals keep on attending workshops to develop this skill. After an accident, investigator conclude with one root cause of the accident, generally blaming who was at fault. Accident is investigated like a criminal investigation to find out a single cause or person to blame for. But do you think   an accident is result of a single cause or act of a person-surely not at all. In fact, many factors related to   environmental, behavioural, and personal randomly combine together to cause an accident to happen. Therefore, a fundamental shift in the approach is required now and that is Incident Analysis to find   all contributory factors causing an accident. In this approach the aim is to find the facts by careful analysis of situation leading to an accident . The simple substitution of words can have great impact. We can get more employee participation in the process and reap...

In conventional safety approach, the employee strive to meet goals decided not by them but someone else. This develop an attitude of “working to avoid failure”   in them. To meet such goal, employee are not motivated rather they do not own safety in reduction of workplace injury. Safety goals are most often stated in negative reinforcement terms like reduction in injury by 10, 20,30 percent and tracking of this goal means keeping score of injuries. Everybody shift blames of injury on other and safety performance is met by under reported injury case. In contrast, Safety goals if decided by the employee in positive terms, they take ownership and “work to achieve success”. Giving safety an achievement perspective like reducing no. of   unsafe conditions, contribute ultimately to less injury situations. Let’s think to shift taking goals in achievable terms in safety.

Safety should be a value integrated with every activity or priority in a work routine. Safe work should be   a enduring norms whether the current focus is on production, cost or quality. Safety should be paced with challenging dangers due to dynamic technology. Therefore we need to think over the paradigm shifts for total safety. Be a part of transformation to safety: visit www.safetitude,com P-1: From Regulation compliance to Corporate responsibility P-2: From Failure oriented to Achievement oriented P-3: From Result focus to Safetitude (Safety + Attitude) focus P-4: From Top-down approach to Bottom-up engagement P-5: From Independent to Interdependent teamwork P-6: From Piecemeal to A system approach P-7: From Fault finding to Fact finding P-8: From Reactive to Proactive P-9: From Quick-fix to Continuous improvement P-10: From Priority to Value