A Safety Management Approach
Bob Lapidus, CSP, CSMS
Ever since I was a child, I believed that safety belts were life-saving devices to be worn when riding in a vehicle. I even asked my dad to install them in our 1958 Chevrolet, a car that did not require seat belts. He did.
Years later, as a safety professional, I put a license plate holder around my vehicle’s rear license plate that stated:
Buckle Up
Life’s Precious
I would watch people drive up behind me and put their seatbelts on. That made me feel real good.
I then began to see Budget Rent-A-Car vehicles with the same license plate holder with Life’s Precious put in quotes. Someone must have seen my holder and thought it was a good message. That also made me feel good.
Life’s Precious. Within the safety profession, it ought to be the mission of everything we do. Sure, we have to comply with governmental safety regulations, but even those standards have at their core, the purpose to prevent accidents, mitigate loss, and save lives.
Going beyond the minimum regulations brings us to the point of establishing good safety practices that offer our managers, supervisors and employees the opportunity to do everything in their power to work safely, wear the needed personal protective equipment, use the right equipment, and implement the policies, procedures, and training that have been given to them.
If all of us believe that life is truly precious, we would not take shortcuts. We would follow the directions for using the various pieces of equipment on the job. We would seek to maintain our focus on the work we are doing and try to avoid being distracted.
Can you take this slogan, this mission, and use it in your work? Can you transmit to your people the life’s precious message? Can you convey the importance of making sure that correct safety performance matters on a moment to moment basis? In a split second, an error, a distraction, the failure to do what is right, can lead to a severe injury, even a death.
Embedding life’s precious into the psyche of each and every one of your people will enhance morale and raise your safety efforts from a have to effort to a want to effort. Putting the health and safety of everyone up front, both on- and off-the-job would do wonders for your safety efforts. It would show everyone that you choose life for them.
For More Information:
To become part of discussions on topics like the one above, go to www.safetycenter.org to obtain 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.