Each tool brings us an advantage. In physical terms, it is usually a mechanical advantage. But never a thinking advantage. Tools sometimes make us think less. We don’t always anticipate what could go wrong if we use the wrong tool or use a tool in the wrong way. A screwdriver is not a lever or a chisel. A wrench is not a hammer.

Sharpest tool in the drawer

One of the most frequently used tools in any house is a knife. A sharp edge. Table knives. Steak knives. Knives to cut vegetables or remove the skin from fruit. A knife for spreading putty. A knife used in scrapbooking. A pocket knife. A hunting knife. A utility knife, which is usually a handle with replaceable razor blades.

All these knives were designed for specific purposes. Each one should be used as designed, and the user should make sure they are always cutting in a way that does not endanger them or those around them. Use the knife that is sharp enough for the job, has the right length, and that you can apply sufficient pressure to cut with. Sounds easy enough, right?

In my experience, the utility knife is the most mis-judged knife of all those above. In using a utility knife, people frequently use too much pressure so they can get the cut done. High amounts of force, applied to a fine edge, can often lead to a slip that could result in injury. In industries where these knives are used routinely, employees are taught proper cutting techniques, given cut-proof or cut-resistant gloves to wear on their non-cutting hand, and even given careful instruction on how to change the blade when it is too dull to properly cut.

If I buy that same knife at Home Depot, I won’t get that instruction. I might read the warnings, but they won’t all come to mind each time I pick the knife up. And a cut-proof glove? They’re a little pricey for the amount of time the average home owner might ever use the knife, so they don’t get purchased and kept with the knife.

Last week, I had to replace the thermostat in my home. A simple job, but it required a couple of short jumper wires. Three inches long with about three-quarters of an inch bare wire on each end. I couldn’t find my wire strippers – the tool that is designed to do exactly this task. And it does the task well with minimal risk. I did find my utility knife, and with careful consideration and deliberate action, used that tool to strip the wires. To do it safely took some effort. I didn’t just hold the knife to the insulation and cut toward the end. Too much possibility of nicking the wire or slipping and cutting something else. Work was done without injury. It just took longer and involved more risk.

Risk, ultimately, it the thing we are willing to trade for expediency. Does that make sense to you?

The next time you are faced with compromising on tool use, ask yourself what the true compromise is. As what you are giving up or willing to risk in order to get the job done. And if you have employees that you are accountable for, ask yourself if you would be willing to allow them the same risk.

Thanks, and let’s be careful out there.

This leads to a lot of interesting behavior, and too much emphasis at times on the wrong things.

For instance, when the trend in injuries starts to climb, some people go into defensive mode. They direct more and more people to look at the things that caused recent injury and remind people what to do to avoid those things. If they were playing offense, they would always be looking for the next potential situation to avoid, the next hazard to put to rest forever.

When we play offense well, we “run up the score” on safe hours worked, because we are playing such good offense we can’t be stopped.

Truth is, no one has enough players to play safety defensively. You can protect only so much. You need to engage the players – your employees – in the powerful offensive skills of awareness and action.

It’s great to have an incredible goalie or an ace closer to come in and finish the game. But if the offense doesn’t score, it won’t matter. Win, you must.

Much of what they do is an attempt to regulate common sense. Or at least some basic safety sense.  Unfortunately, the more idiot-proof something is designed to be, the more likely we will find a better idiot.

Of course, none of that applies to us, because we aren’t the idiots that they design for, right? We’ve all seen the cautions on a cup of hot coffee that that contents may be hot, but would you believe there are even more ridiculous examples:

1. A warning label on a cardboard sunshield that says “Do not drive with shield in place”
2. Label on a remote control that says “Not dishwasher safe”
3. Label on a collapsible stroller that says “Remove child before folding”

We don’t need a label to tell us to be careful, we just need to be observant and turn observation into action.

What’s the most bizarre or unnecessary safety warning you have read? Can you imagine that someone might have done that to cause the warning?

Thanks, and let’s be careful out there!

Wine Glass

This summer will mark 24 years of marriage for my wife and I. We hadn’t been dating very long when  she told me her primary rule: Love me, love my kids. Her children were 8 and 4 at the time, and it was clear that if we were going to continue a relationship, I would be expected to treat these children as though they were my own.

Now some people interpret that to mean they need to figure out how to befriend the kids, how to make them like you. But that’s not how I saw it. It meant that they were going to experience their mother and I as husband and wife, and as co-parents. I was not replacing their father, they would still have lost of interaction with him. But when they were with us, which was most of the time, I was going to be active in their lives.

Active as a soccer coach, as a chauffer, as a disciplinarian, as a parent.

I grew up in a “do as I say, not as I do” sort of way. My dad was a great provider, a gentle man, and a good friend to have. I was taught to never curse, though there was plenty of cursing to learn from. I was also taught to respect alcohol and the laws regarding it, and never had a drink before I was old enough. But I saw a lot of drinking, a lot more than I know my friends saw.

The one most critical thing I learned was this: If I was going to hold my children accountable for NEVER drinking and driving, then I had to display that same level of behavior.

Most people who drink any alcohol will not have any issues with having a drink or two and then driving. But how do you explain to kids, who may or may not choose to experiment with alcohol at some point, how to know if you are too impaired to drive? My answer was that the only allowable amount was none. No drinks when driving.  If the family was out to dinner together, I would have water or iced tea.

But if we were home on a Saturday night and I wanted to have a couple of beers or some red wine, I had no problem drinking in front of the kids. And I would tell them this: If you or your friends ever decide to try alcohol, you need to promise me that you will not drive or get in the car of someone who was drinking. No matter the quantity. When you are old enough to drink, drink safe, at home.

Did my kids wait until they were legally old enough to drink? Not all of them. But, I do know they learned to drink responsibly.

How about you? Are you conscious of the training you are providing your children in this critical area?

When I worked in a facility that put these in place, I had the pleasure of working with one of those creative genius types. This guy had incredibly good concepts, and a ton of energy to help deliver them. Frequently, however, he was seen as just plain crazy.

My favorite part of new employee orientation was when he was called in to teach the importance of the safety obligations. He had a unique way of demonstrating the first obligation – We are obligated to refuse to do work we cannot do safely.

After explaining the concept of the obligations, and defining the first one, he would ask for a volunteer to step forward. He would walk over to a desk on the side wall and open the top drawer. He explained that this was new, super-safe office furniture. It had two safety systems built in. The first was a sensor that would keep the drawer from closing if something was not completely in the drawer. Second, if there were a sudden movement, as if to slam the drawer, it would lock up just like a seatbelt does when there is a sudden pull. These safety features, he would explain, would assure that no one could get their hand caught in an office desk drawer, a frequent form of office injury.

Then, he would open the drawer and ask the volunteer to stick his hand into it so he could show how the systems worked. Sometimes, the person would just do it, and other times they would hesitate. If they said, “I refuse to do that” he would say “but it’s not unsafe, I just explained to you the safety systems that are built in”. At this point, regardless of what the volunteer did, he helped them see the most important aspect.

Even if you think you are protected, that doesn’t mean the protections can’t fail.

What people learned in this training was the importance not only of refusing to do work that could not be done safey, but also of refusing to take any risk that they don’t have to. Reaching into the drawer to help demonstrate the safety systems is not necessary. Plus, the systems can fail.

The real importance of this first obligation is recognizing that none of us need to take unnecessary risk. Just because someone in authority asks you to do something, you still need to think for yourself. Can I do that thing safely?

Well, can you?

Thanks, and lets be careful out there.

Then there are the numbers we were required to report. Like the incident rate. This represented the frequency with which our process resulted in human injury.

After working as a reliability engineer and a process engineer, it was only a matter of time before I realized that we had a repeatable process that resulted in injury at a fairly reliable rate. One month might be better (lower number) than the previous month, but over time the average was fairly consistent. There was variability, but also predictability.

But what if we stopped measuring in terms of our failures, and measured the number of actions that were aimed at improving safety? How about if we report on the number of inspections held, the number of unsafe conditions corrected, and the number or actions carried out based on recommendations from incident investigations?

Every day that employees go home as whole and healthy as they came to work is a victory. Every day we take measurable actions to make sure that happens again tomorrow is a bigger win.

So what do you do to assure that tomorrow is safer than today? Do you take action to make it so, or only corrective action when an accident occurs.

You can make a difference, and you have no reason not to do so.

Thanks, and let’s be careful out there.

I’ve worked around big machines my whole life. Machines don’t kill people, but people die from making mistakes while working with them. Machines are totally unforgiving of human error, which is unfortunate because quite honestly, most of us are likely to err each day.

In the snow and ice we had in Atlanta a few weeks back I took this picture of icicles on my roof. Most of the icicles formed exactly as you might expect. Built by the pull of gravity, narrow at the low end with a broad base holding them to the gutter. Most were straight, and they were of varying lengths. But what about the one in the picture? Why the odd forked formation? Was it the result of an air pattern from the nearby bathroom vent that caused two streams to form? Or maybe it was the way the tree branches shaded some of them in parts of the day but not others.

If I had a goal to have no icicles form, I lost control. I would have had to put some heating wires on the roof or the gutters to assure that anything that melted didn’t re-form as ice.

If I had a goal to have identical, perfect vertical icicles, then there, too, I lost control. I may not have been able to prevent this formation, but I could have stopped it before it grew to two distinct legs.

And in safety, we try to control those things, which we have learned through experience, could result in injury or property loss. We see something that looks a little out of control, and we try to adjust it back to normal. When we are well trained, we don’t look for the failure, but we look for the potential for failure. We see things developing that could take us out of control and try to restore order.

When a person is injured or killed in a mahinery related accident, people will frequently say it was a random event. I worked with someone who received a bad hand injury reaching into a machine. He thought that he could do it safely, and had done it without incident hundreds of times. But this one time, there was a factor that was different. Not a major factor, but enough to cause a different outcome. You might say it was a random event, but what wasn’t random was his action. It was planned and reapeated time and again, just without consequence.

Do you see someone do something around machinery that makes you uncomfortable? Are you afraid to challenge them because of their experience doing the job? What if the unexpected happens? Will they walk away or is there a possibility that they could be seriously or fatally injured?

Random events. The definition is clear – you don’t know what and you don’t know when. Something is going to happen. We can’t control that, but we can control how prepared we are for possible events, and what precautions we take to stay out of Harm’s way. And to stay out of the way of his cousin, Potential Harm.

Watch out for random. Thanks, and let’s be careful out there.

Refuse to do work that you cannot perform safely.

If you see someone performing work in an unsafe manner, or in a manner that could lead to injury, you are obligated to speak up and stop them.

Both of these require an environment of trust and respect, and a great deal of patience on the part of managers and team leaders. If implemented in an environment that has not historically supported stopping work to look at the safety of an action, then you need to recognize the need to think differently. You need to be willing to praise and acknowledge those that are trying to bring a higher level of safety to their work.

The power of the process lies in obligation #3.

If someone asks you to stop doing something that they consider unsafe, you are obligated to stop, discuss and issue with them, and agree to a safe approach before continuing.

Would this bring your operation to a grinding halt? If so, you likely have too many safety issues on your hands and you need a major overhaul of your safety program. But if you have been chugging along at some “acceptable” level of injury and can’t seem to make progress to a level of zero incidents, I suggest you consider how you could implement something similar in your workplace.

Here are a few ideas to get you started.

1. Do you have a safety committee that meets on a regular basis? Bring the idea to them and see what they think would be the probability of acceptance. Maybe just reinforcing the idea of the first obligation is the place to start, and you could work on an observation program in the future that would allow you to consider the next two.
2. Can your management or leadership team buy in to this? Do they trust the workforce enough to know that people will use this the right way? You may need to start with that team first, and make sure they could support the implications. You aren’t selling a new safety system here, you are trying to raise the level of safety performance. You will never get to zero injuries without a process that fully engages employees. And you don’t buy that off the shelf, you implement with every day and every interaction.
3. Do you have PC or email access for employees? Consider setting up an anonymous way of submitting concerns or ideas. In one place I worked, we had a simple database set up with forms where people could submit ideas from kiosks that required no sign-in. They could choose to add their name or not, and we continually acknowledged those that submitted suggestions.
4. Are you concerned about how your union would accept a process where employees are expected to “confront” one another? Ask the union leadership to help you problem solve how this could work in your environment. First, help them see how this could lead to better levels of safety. Consider what discipline would look like for someone who chooses not to stop when confronted. If an employee is violating accepted procedures, then management should already be noticing that and dealing with it. Obligation #2 is designed to identify new areas to improve, not to tattle on those who are breaking existing rules.

As far as I can see, there is no reason to avoid employee involvement in improving safety. I see it as the only way to get to world class performance. You don’t need these three obligations to get there, but you need something.

If not this, what are you doing to get to that next level? Remember, hope is not a strategy. Results require action.

Thanks, and lets be careful out there.

My thanks to Trish McFarlane, who’s recent post on preparedness prompted my thinking about how we all can find safer ways to do things. Though not directly related, these ideas can help move past mere compliance and into an environment and culture where safety is first and foremost in reality, not just in our employee handbooks.

What I have seen work is embodied in three obligations that belong to each and every employee. The first one was very simply:

Refuse to do work that you cannot perform safely.

The second obligation puts our power of observation to work. Like the first obligation, it involves a high level of trust and respect. Obligation #2 is:

If you see someone performing work in an unsafe manner, or in a manner that could lead to injury, you are obligated to speak up and stop them.

Sounds simple, right? But imagine you are a new employee, being trained by a 15 year veteran and he is demonstrating a method you can see is risky. Let’s say he’s using a cutting tool without using the protective equipment provided and required. If you’re brave you might point that out and hope that he just forgot. But you might also be concerned that he is going to explain it away . “I’ve been doing it like this for 15 years, do you really think you can tell me how to do my job?”

If we truly care about the safety of our workplace, we learn not to care about someone’s pride in successfully avoiding injury even though they are taking unnecessary risk. We learn to value that doing something in the safest possible way is the best approach to assuring our safety and the safety of those around us.

To implement this obligation, you might start with de-personalizing it. Promote the observation required by having people identify unsafe conditions or housekeeping problems. Something that doesn’t start with a “You’re doing it wrong” kind of approach, but gets people comfortable with identifying hazards. The hard part is in implementing a system for people to report these kind of things that includes putting resolution of the problem in their court. It could be as simple as having them send an email to a safety@yourcorp mailbox that is reviewed everyday. Or a simple database form that gives an individual an opportunity to document what they saw, report what they did about it, and suggest how it could be avoided in the future.

So if an employee notices a small puddle of oil or fluid, they can go to a form to report it, state that they cleaned it up, and suggest that the shop take a look at all the lift vehicles to see if there are leaks that can be repaired. Then, and this requires discipline, the employee is acknowledged for identifying the problem, for taking care of the immediate threat, and the appropriate assignment to follow up on a solution is made.

As employees get more observant, and get recognized for that behavior, they start to see that they can impact safety before an incident and start to challenge one another in their actions.

Now, you might be wondering if employees are really willing to challenge each other, or if they are required or expected to report observations on other team members as well. Will they be willing to name a co-worker who is doing something in an unsafe manner?

In my next and final post on this topic, I’ll explain why Obligation #3 helps tidy that up.

In a safety audit, she would be asked if she had a plan, and she would say yes. She could show a document that would list the right details and actions. She would be in compliance.

Part of why she was prepared was her experience.  She knew the threat was real. She knew that the time to act was now. She quickly executed her plan.

In safety, management frequently develops policies and procedures. Many are required through regulatory agencies like OSHA, and some are created out of necessity or past experience. Sometimes we shut the barn door after the horses are gone, but at least no more horses get out.

It’s time for a new level of policy. A policy of preparedness. A policy where we demonstrate our value for safety every day.

Where I work, we call it an obligation. An obligation is something that everyone is accountable for, and we have three of them.

The first obligation is simple, but it requires that management demonstrate discipline, openness and trust.

I am obligated to refuse to do something that I can’t do safely.

Simple, right?

My craziest boss would demonstrate this obligation for new employees in a way that stuck with them. He told them the whole plant was engineered for safety. That even the desk drawers were designed so that you couldn’t get your hand caught in them. He would ask a new employee to come up to the desk, he opened a drawer and told the new employee “Go ahead and put your hand in there. I’ll slam this shut and you will see how it works.”

Some of them did it, others said  “No, I can’t be sure of my safety.”

And that was his first point. Employees have to learn to trust their own sense of what is safe or not, and not assume they are protected.

And management has to encourage the challenge. Not just tolerate it, but encourage it.

How do you implement an obligation like this? Well, you start by asking employees if there is anything they do that raises concern over their safety. Do they feel under-trained or inadequately protected? They may not volunteer the information without being asked, you have to give them reason to trust you.  So that’s step 1. Ask your employees if they feel at risk in their day to day actions, and help them resolve that problem. That’s the first step toward going beyond compliance for a safer work place, and engaging your employees in making their workplace safer every day.

I’ll cover the other two obligations later this week.