Old school managers often think that the way to improve safety performance is to find out who is responsible for each accident and punish that person.  The problem with that approach is that  usually you are punishing someone who is already in the hospital or recuperating at home.  The idea was that if employees knew they were going to be punished for having an accident, they would be less likely to have accidents.  This philosophy only makes sense if you believe that workers set out purposefully to injure themselves.

If you believe instead that workers have just as big a stake in their safety as you do, and that injuries are most often the result of mistakes and accidents, you can see that punishment is not a realistic way to make your company safer.  A much more productive way to accomplish your safety goals is to design your equipment, environment, and procedures to help employees avoid errors that could result in injury.  This will address (in most cases) about 80 - 85% of the injuries in your workplace.[i]

According to the principles of human performance, there are several ways in which companies unintentionally set up employees to make a mistake that can result in an injury.  These error-likely situations include:

• Deficient procedures such as lack of warnings, or processes that are inconsistent with user needs
• Poor communication such as incomplete instructions, or vague verbal directions
• Inadequately trained workers
• Conflicting interests such as productivity vs. safety or operations vs. maintenance
• Inadequately labeled equipment
• Poorly designed equipment such as those that have pinch points or require the worker to be a contortionist to reach the relevant parts to operate or clean

A comprehensive safety program provides the resources necessary to identify and eliminate error-likely situations, preferably by involving line employees in the process.[ii]

Involvement of employees in the safety program pays huge dividends because it creates buy-in and gives credibility to the program.  When management tries to introduce a safety program without worker involvement, it can often lead employees to rebel against the program.  However, when people who are actually doing a job are involved in finding ways to do it more safely, both the people who are involved and the people who work with them tend to find the program a little more palatable and are more willing to cooperate with new procedures and rules that may be drafted.