Bob Lapidus, CSP, CSMS
A successful organization is productive, efficient, and safe. Working with its employees, management strives to enhance everything it does to make the organization thrive in all things.
When an organization starts to lose sight of its goals and objectives, when it starts to ignore problems, when it allows sloppiness to become the order of the day, and it becomes lax in its efforts to do everything the right way, it will soon start to crumble and fail. Products and services will lose their reliability. The inner energy of the organization will subside. People will lose their desire to do their work to the best of their capabilities.
Nothing can stay static. It either gets better or worse. Whether it’s the organization as a whole or part of the entity, such as the safety program, energy must continually be expended to keep efforts productive, efficient, and safe.
As it is said in the stock market, history is no predictor of future performance. Past safety efforts were successful because they fit the culture of the organization and they strove to prevent accidents and injuries on an ongoing basis.
Today, we need to continue to identify our current safety problems and develop new remedies based upon present-day information, knowledge, and skills. Get buy-in by obtaining involvement in solving identified issues. Ask the involved people for their ideas. Safety people should not try to find the solutions to everything by themselves. Rather, safety people need to energize the workforce. Praise people for their efforts. Thank them for taking positive actions. Coach and counsel those people who lack knowledge, skills and/or discernment, always recognizing productive efforts.
Get out of the office to observe every day work life and talk with fellow employees. Seek to build a never-ending and dynamic safety program and organization.
For More Information:
Go to www.safetycenter.org for more information about Safety Center’s Safety Management Specialist Certificate.
After completing this nine-day program, graduates may take the exam to achieve the Certified Safety Management Specialist (CSMS) designation. Recipients of the CSMS receive a beautiful plaque and become part of an elite group of safety specialists who have achieved this recognition. Once this certification is attained, successful candidates keep it for the rest of their lives without any additional requirements or fees.