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Who is Responsible for Safety?
By Carl Potter
The call
In my business as a certified safety professional and management consultant, I work with electric utility companies across the nation. I enjoy my work until the phone rings and I hear someone in my office say "Oh no, not again." On the other end of the line someone has called to let us know about a fatality in the industry. Sometimes the call is about a tree trimmer who has been fatally injured.
Prior to starting my business 16 years ago, I spent 17 years as a journeyman lineman and substation technician and worked with a lot of tree crews. During numerous storm recoveries, I worked with crews to clear and re-energize a zone. We'd clear the trees, get the lines up and the lights on - and it was my job to keep all of those guys safe.
The decision
What I learned through those experiences, and have confirmed in my research since that time, is that we all make a decision every day - we decide if we're going to work safely. I watched workers determine how they were going to do the job of clearing electric lines covered with tree branches and other debris. Sometimes I had to tell the contract tree trimming crews they were breaking one of our company rules or doing work in an unsafe manner. When the response was, "Too bad, that's the  way we do it in our company," I had to walk them through the process and have a little "attitude adjustment" time. Usually a safer decision was made.
Most injuries or fatalities happen not because of bad equipment, or the company doesn't care, or the industry doesn't have the best work practices, but because a worker made a poor decision. He or she used the "just this once" philosophy. When we get away with breaking the rules once, it encourages us to try and get away with it again. We never know when it's our last chance. That's why we've got to work toward creating a zero-injury environment.
Targeting zero
When I get involved in an investigation, one of the first things I ask is, "What else could have been done to prevent the incident?" When someone is fatally injured on the job, it isn't just the company that is affected; family and friends also suffer.
The bottom line is that we need to make the decision to work safely so we can do every task and trim every tree without an injury - even the scrapes, cuts and bruises that aren't OSHA recordables.
These minor injuries don't have to happen - if you accept that they do, they become part of your business. When you don't put on the long sleeves and the gloves and when you don't wear what you need to in order to protect your body, it makes a big difference in the safety culture of your company. When we make it a practice to not follow the rules or "do it just this once," we build a culture of mistrust and misunderstanding about safety responsibility. Then everyone starts blaming one another for the problems.
The blame game
Too often I hear management ask, "Why won't they work safely?" "Why do our workers take shortcuts?" "Why won't they take responsibility?" Meanwhile, workers ask, "Why doesn't management support safety?" "Why is it that all I hear from my supervisor is get it done!" "Why won't they take responsibility?" Far too often executives, managers, supervisors and even on-site safety professionals point to the workforce as the problem. The truth is that everybody is responsible, from the owners and executives to the visiting college intern.
Do you believe that you can go out and do tree work without getting injured? Jobs are designed so that we can do them safely and we probably have all the rules we need to do the work without injury. The biggest issue is that we fail to follow the procedures and to wear personal protection equipment (PPE).
 After a severe ice storm in December 2007, a tree crew was cleaning up an area near my home. They pulled up in their trucks and went to work without putting out cones or wearing vests. They didn't attempt to stop the traffic on the busy two-lane road. I noticed what was going on so I stopped my truck to block traffic, hoping that any minute the crew was going to set up traffic barriers and use other safety equipment, but they didn't. I know these guys were just trying to get the work done. They apparently didn't give a thought to not having an injury or damaging any equipment - they made the decision to work unsafely. They chose not to use the cones and vests that were on their trucks.
Targeting zero injuries takes effort. The job is going to get done, but are you going to decide to get it done without injury to yourself, co-workers and the general public? We have to take individual responsibility for our safety first and the people around us to have a successful job. Writer Michael Korda said it this way: "Success on any major scale requires you to take responsibility and, in the final analysis, the one quality that all successful people have is the ability to take responsibility."
Taking responsibility
There is more to taking personal responsibility for workplace safety than you might think. (See Figure 1: Responsibility Model Diagram.)
First recognize that safety responsibility is a personal choice. You act on that responsibility because you feel you "have to" or you "choose to." You will see in the Responsibility Model the two ways to take responsibility: "other-directed" or "self-directed." These terms refer to states of mind about authority. Either one "has to" do something, (the authority is directed by others) or one "chooses to" (the authority is directed by self).
The "I have to" person
At the top left hand side of the model is the term "authority." This authority comes from believing that someone is making you do something. This thinking leads one to comply or rebel against the perceived authority. To "comply" means that you do whatever you are told to without a sign of resistance. To "rebel" reflects open or observable resistance.
A compliant person is passive in his or her reactions. Although the person may seem to be happy to do it, deep down they resent being told to act by the authority. "Rebels" are more open and observable in their resistance. The results are the same whether the person complies or rebels - the person usually seeks revenge.
Ultimately, those who think of their job as something they have to do see themselves as the "victim" of, or "persecuted" by, a perceived authority. This way of thinking does nothing to help anyone - especially the victim. If employees consistently view the company, senior executives, supervisors or safety professionals as authority figures, they will find it difficult to deal with conflict, which in turn will affect their careers.
Obviously, the "I have to" model is not a desired state of mind. Conversely, the "I choose to" side of the model reflects a person who is autonomous.
The "I choose to" person
Autonomous people have an "I choose to" mindset when it comes to doing their jobs or behaving safely. Think back to when you were a teenager and your parents and teachers "made you" go to school, pick up your room and so forth. When you got older, you probably looked back and realized that they were only trying to help you become a mature, responsible adult. "I choose to" is a powerful state of mind.
In an "I choose to" state of mind, we either agree or disagree with the prescribed way of doing something - it's our choice. By studying the facts of a situation or request, we say "yea" or "nay" to what is asked of us. To say "nay" is to disagree with what we are told and what we believe are the facts of the matter. The decision is not emotional because everyone knows where you stand. The choice to agree or disagree has consequences. To accept consequences - either positive or negative - of a decision is a mature act. Consequences that are positive tend to be repeated. The person with the "I choose to" state of mind accepts the negative consequences as correction and moves on. For this reason, people who follow the "I choose to" state of mind tend to get more responsibility over time.
Now some may say, "Oh, more responsibility? Sure, they will give me more, and with no more money!" I believe in most cases when an employee is trusted and begins to handle more responsibility, either money or job security is the reward. As trust builds, freedom follows. Freedom is earned by building trust.
Let me put this in perspective. Say a customer called and said that you forgot a limb. You go out to the site, park your pickup and get the cones out. You grab a hand saw and head to the backyard where the tree is and the customer follows you. You start cutting, but realize that you don't have your safety glasses.
You know safety procedures require you to wear eye protection but it's all the way back at the truck, so you'll go ahead without them - just this once. You make the decision to do this job without the proper equipment and start sawing. Debris flies up and hits you in the face and now you have something in your eye. You go back to the truck and look in the mirror, trying to clean your eye. You're thinking the whole time that you should have worn your glasses, because you are in trouble. Now you have to go to the doctor and will have an OSHA recordable. Your boss is going to be mad.
You go back to the office to find your boss and when you go in your boss asks if you had the equipment on when the incident happened. You tell him that you did but it didn't work. The supervisor takes you to the doctor, who takes care of your eye, and you go home. A couple of days later you are back to work but your eye hasn't healed and, in fact, two weeks later you have an infection. Then the infection moves to the other eye. You have lost 60 percent of your vision for the rest of your life.
Who gets sued? Who do the lawyers go after? The company and the insurance provider. Who made the decision? You, the employee. Who suffers the most? You. The lawyers make money. The insurance companies already know that it is going to happen. Does the company suffer? Maybe a little compared to you and your family. The lost wages that you have as a result of this are huge.
It is imperative that you take responsibility. You have to make the decision not to get injured. Companies want to hire people who know how to work safely and not get injured because injuries costs a company a lot of money. Even the most minor OSHA recordable injury costs $11,500 in direct and indirect costs. If you have to go to the doctor, a supervisor has to go with you. You are off work and you have medical expenses. Research shows that a work stoppage happens when somebody gets injured. It takes a period of time for everybody to get back to work, therefore production suffers. The injured employee loses an average of $1,000 per year of earning power after an injury. One minor injury can cost you $20,000 over a 20- to 25-year period.
Injuries cost everyone. Targeting a zero injury culture and taking personal responsibility for safety means that we have to be willing to speak up when we observe people working unsafely.
Personal observation
When we observe co-workers behaving unsafely, we take responsibility when we are willing to point it out. Conversely it also means allowing others to point out our own unsafe behavior so we avoid injury. What typically keeps us from taking such responsibility? Embarrassment. Most people don't want to be considered unsafe. It's like saying, "Hey! You don't know what you're doing!"
During incident investigations, I've heard someone say, "I started to say something to you but was afraid to do so." Why would someone be afraid? Let's face it, no one wants to be thought of as not knowing their job. However, when it comes to safety we should all be able to speak up or be spoken to.
When I worked in the high-risk, high-voltage business, we had a communication process that created a work environment that supported taking personal responsibility for safety. This process raised our awareness and helped us stay focused. It gave us a way to communicate without saying, "Hey you don't know what you're doing!"
Remember where you're at
We used a process that if you saw me without my safety glasses now and you said, "Hey, Carl, remember where you are at," and you gave the sign for safety glasses, there was only one acceptable response: "thank you." That is the only response that I could have because "remember where you are at" is intended to provide a system of communication so people appreciate and understand that it's about raising awareness and preventing injury. (Yeah, I know! You're not supposed to end a sentence with a preposition. Well, in this case you do.)
We have to remember where we are at all times because in this business a person can be seriously injured or die if he or she is not highly aware. You have to be keenly aware of what is going on and not drop your guard from start to finish because you are in a hazardous area.
Raising safety awareness through a communication process lowers incident rates, prevents injuries, and increases your chances of going home every day without an injury. When people start talking to each other and looking out for each other, they aren't afraid anymore to say something.
The bottom line
The bottom line is that you have a decision to make every day. You are trained how to work safely, what equipment to wear and when to wear it, and what equipment to use and how to use it. It is your decision whether you wear it, use it and follow procedures.
Develop an "I choose to" attitude about safety because you want to be the best in the business. The best in the business doesn't necessarily trim the tree the fastest. They do it correctly and in a quality way so that the tree is going to remain healthy. Most of all, they do it so they can trim many, many trees after that because they do it safely, following procedures. They look at the best practices and find out all the newest, greatest techniques and procedures so that they can put those things in place. Learn to look out for each other and you'll have a workplace where nobody gets hurt - and that's something we can all live with.
Carl Potter, CSP, CMC works with organizations that want to create an environment where nobody gets hurt. As an advocate for zero-injury workplaces, he is a nationally renowned safety speaker, author and advisor to industry. This article was adapted from his presentation on the same topic at TCI EXPO 2007 in Hartford.
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