“Safety First” discourages personal responsibility. Is it reasonable to assume that someone would hire you to work in a hazardous environment, and then tell you that nothing is more important to them than your personal safety? Of course not.
Difficult and dangerous jobs are accomplished by people who are willing to assume risk – and the assumption of that risk must come before anything else. Lawyers and insurance adjusters and government agencies have altered that simple equation by perpetuating the belief that your employer might actually care about your safety more than you. That’s dangerous, in my opinion, (even if it’s sometimes true.)
Mitigating risk makes good financial sense, in the same way that wearing a harness at 600 feet makes good common sense. But telling an employee that his Safety comes before everything else sends a mixed and somewhat suspicious message.
The fact is, companies don’t go out of business when people get hurt. (Well, rarely.) They go out of business when they run out of money. (Bailouts notwithstanding.)
Wouldn’t it be more honest, (and possibly more effective) for a boss to say to an employee, “Look Joe, this is a business and if you get hurt on the job, our insurance premiums will go through the roof. Productivity will suffer. OSHA will fine us or maybe shut us down. Our profit and your personal safety happen to be tied together, but don’t be confused by that coincidence. Our motivation is profit. Your motivation is a paycheck. We’re not your parents and you’re not a child. Let’s be clear about why we’re each here and let’s not mess that up with a careless and stupid injury.”
- Mike Rowe
Wouldn’t it be more honest, (and possibly more effective) for a boss to say to an employee, “Look Joe, this is a business and if you get hurt on the job, our insurance premiums will go through the roof. Productivity will suffer. OSHA will fine us or maybe shut us down. Our profit and your personal safety happen to be tied together, but don’t be confused by that coincidence. Our motivation is profit. Your motivation is a paycheck. We’re not your parents and you’re not a child. Let’s be clear about why we’re each here and let’s not mess that up with a careless and stupid injury.”
Music to my ears! I’m exhausted with being a nanny to a bunch of people who have turned safety meetings and obsession into a tool to avoid and delay work. We have spent millions of dollars on the most simple and stupid “hazards”. If a buzz saw will cut you don’t put your hand in it. If a pipe is overhead and you may bump your head on it DUCK and don’t be stupid.
It takes hours to drag our way through the ordeals of detailed pre job meetings that probably run out of real value in the first few minutes.
I got the connection between profitability, my job and safety about 4 decades ago. You break stuff and get hurt it costs money and you may not work again for one reason or another.
The whole safety thing has become a demonstration of “how much someone cares”. Get the job done right, don’t waste time, don’t break stuff and safety will be taken care of.