Dispelling the Myths: A Case Study in Developing Safety Programs

July/August 1989

Annaco's executive vice president explores the myths and realities of developing a safety program.

By Bill Lowery

Bill Lowery is executive vice president of Annaco, Inc., Akron, Ohio.

Think it's fairly simple to install a safety program? Think again. We started our program at Annaco three years ago and we're not finished yet. Fortunately, we've learned many things during this time, among them three common misconceptions. I call them the Three Great Myths of Safety Programs:

1. I can hire someone to do this.
2. Safety basically is straightforward.
3. This will only take a few weeks.

Myth No. 1:

I can hire someone to do this.

The most frustrating thing during the first two years of our safety program development process was trying to use outside consultants. I tried two safety engineers; an industrial hygienist; and a team from the Industrial Commission of Ohio that included a hygienist, safety engineers, a crane specialist, an ergonomist, and an employee assistance program specialist. While these consultants brought expertise, they lacked key ingredients: presence, industry knowledge, and authority.

Presence. A consultant who visits once a month, or even once a week, is not on-site long enough to implement policies and handle problems. Getting a safety program started requires day-to-day involvement. As rules and policies are established, an authority figure must be there to monitor implementation and enforcement. This requires an enormous amount of time--possibly months or years during the implementation phase alone.

Industry Knowledge. A consultant who doesn't know your industry, the idiosyncrasies of your plant, and the special needs of your employees doesn't have sufficient information to design and implement a good safety program. Even if a consultant does develop a program, it is unlikely that your managers and hourly employees will believe in it. To make this happen, your employees need to be involved in developing the program--and the more involvement the better. A safety consultant's expertise should be blended with your staff's expertise to make the program successful. Your consultant probably will be the first to tell you this.

Authority. The people responsible for your safety program need almost unlimited authority. I'm talking about the authority that normally only a CEO has. Carrying out the program requires substantial time commitments by executives, managers, and hourly personnel. It requires a commitment of funds for engineering, equipment, supplies, and training. It requires decisions that affect productivity, like shutting down a machine to correct a safety problem or changing to slower, but safer, production methods. And it requires enforcement at all levels of the organization.

I am not advising against using consultants--you need all the help you can get. But because safety is a key aspect of management, you can't simply turn over this duty to an outsider. To have an effective safety program, it is essential that your executives gain expertise in safety. This comes through working with safety engineers, industrial hygienists, and other specialists. It comes from reading safety literature, from researching problems, and from associating with others involved in safety in your community and your industry. If you are a member of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries (ISRI), I highly recommend getting involved with the association's Safety Committee and taking advantage of ReMA's safety materials.

Myth No. 2:

Safety basically is straightforward.

Two things I found out about safety are that everybody believes in it and that everybody has a different opinion of what is "safe."

In dealing with consultants I've learned that, while there is some common ground, most safety issues are subject to interpretation. I was involved in a lawsuit concerning the guarding of a conveyor. In this case, four experts testified on how a conveyor is required to be guarded legally. Each expert's testimony was different, with two basically testifying that the conveyor was adequately guarded, and two essentially stating that the conveyor was woefully lacking proper guarding. I've learned from this and from using other consultants that safety is much like other inexact sciences, such as medicine and economics, where one person's opinion is often just that--one person's opinion.

This also holds true for the people within our organization, of course. On a given safety question, it's not unusual for there to be different viewpoints among our president, vice president, yard manager, plant engineer, yard supervisor, human resources manager, and hourly personnel. This difference of opinion needs to be resolved. The resolution process normally involves researching the guidelines, reading safety manuals, and discussing the issue with consultants, vendors, and others in the industry. It then requires discussing the issue among the various parties involved and reaching a decision as close to a consensus as possible.

This process of consensus building is time consuming, but critical. The optimal safety program is one that everyone believes in and practices whether or not they are being watched. You can't live with a safety program that is obeyed like the highway speed limit laws. People are more likely to follow a rule or procedure that they've helped develop. When a consensus is not feasible, the person who has been given the authority makes the decision and implements it.

Myth No. 3:

This will only take a few weeks.

There is no simple, packaged approach to creating and implementing a safety program. A safety program has to be customized to your organization and has to be implemented in stages over time.

Customizing. In dispelling Myth No. 2, that safety basically is straightforward, I learned that a safety procedure has to fit our organization and that it requires a consensus to have the best change of being followed.  Therefore, we didn't find an already developed program that would work in our company. We did mind, however, that we could borrow a lot from other companies in our industry, from vendor literature, and from other safety materials. However, we could not adopt any of these without revision.

Some reasons for revision were:

• We believed that safety procedure as stated may have cause another safety hazard.

• We don't believe the procedure went far enough.

• We believed the procedure went too far. For example, the additional steps may been picky and may have resulted in the procedure not being understood or followed.

• The language needed to be tailored to our operation or otherwise changed to be better understood.

Probably more important than the revisions themselves, though, is the revision process. In customizing the safety procedures, we used all our key operations managers as well as many of our hourly personnel. This process not only gave us a better result, but created "ownership" of the safety rules manual that ensued.

Implementing. It took me two years of trying to implement a safety program before I had sufficient knowledge even to prepare an implementation plan. Now I'm in the middle of a three-year plan to install the basics of a sound safety program.

Why so long?

• I had to learn a lot about safety and the special safety requirements of the scrap recycling industry.

• I had a number of false starts. (I had to discover the three myths.)

• Consensus building and finding the right answer take time.

• Changing an organization takes time.

I've discussed the first three points. Now I'll explore the fourth: change. The process of change is the predominant reason for implementing our safety program in stages. In our organization, we are moving from a relatively unstructured approach to safety to a structured, more sophisticated approach. The process is not unlike when we take a general laborer and train that person to be qualified crane operator. That process takes a considerable amount of time because of the sheer number of things that a crane operator must experience and because each step builds on the skill levels of the previous step. Our process, for example, involves the following:

1. Giving the person experience on forklifts, bobcats, and small trucks.
2. Giving the person experience on dump trucks, loadluggers, and front-end loaders.
3. Giving the person experience in small cable and hydraulic cranes.
4. Giving the person experience in maintenance.
5. Giving the person experience in larger crawler and pedestal cranes.
6. Giving the person experience with a locomotive crane.

A difference in implementing a safety program over training a crane operator is that you are not changing skill levels as much as you are changing the following:

• attitudes about safety--at all levels, from top managers to hourly personnel;

• knowledge of safety at all levels;

• safety policies; and

• behavior, such as the observance of safety rules and the practice of safe working habits.

As we install our safety program, we try to do no more than two or three things simultaneously, allowing the proper time for each step. Each step has to be researched, discussed, accepted, taught, implemented, and practiced before it is complete. As an example, following are some the the items we are working on their states of completion:

• safety rules manual--implemented;

• first aid training--implemented;

• operations review system--implemented;

• accident investigation--training scheduled;

• employee assistance program--in research; and

• prescription eyeglass program--in research.

A safety program is never really installed and complete. In our case, we always will have things to do and always will be looking for ways to make our program better. But to get a sound program underway, I would suggest committing at least three full years.

Let me supplant the three myths with three pieces of advice to the chief executive:

1. Plan to spend a lot of time yourself. While plenty of advice and help is available for developing a safety program, you must make the decisions for your organization.
2. Get as many people involved from within your organization as you can. Gather sufficient information and reach a consensus whenever possible.
3. Once you determine what needs to be done, make a good feasible plan and timetable--and stick to it.