Blah, blah, blah said the safety specialist. Be safe, drive safe, work safe, be careful, blah, blah, blah. Is it all just safety rhetoric? Sometimes it seems that way when I attend a safety conference where I have been asked to speak.

Often when I'm working inside a company, I hear someone say: "Do this work long enough and you are bound to get hurt." More blah, blah, blah! In the business of creating zero-injuries in the workplace I find a lot of rhetoric.

Recently I was conducting my Safety and the Supervisor Seminar and one of the participants asked, "Don't you think that sometimes people become complacent because our words become rhetorical?" With further explanation he said, "I don't want my people to get hurt, but I also need them to produce." My challenge to this supervisor was, "What do you do to make sure they are not just hearing the rhetoric?" Going beyond the rhetoric requires everyone at every level to understand their roles and responsibilities.

Supervisors are responsible for the people they assign to perform work in the organization. This level of the organization is sometimes referred to as the frontline, working foreman, crew leader, team leader... whatever. The people who actually do the work and who are exposed directly to the hazards of the job and who are the most likely people to be injured are the "workers". The "company" is the overall organization and often is interchanged with the word "management." Anyone who is tasked with the responsibility of managing people and production is "management." Safety rhetoric can come from any of these levels.

Safety rhetoric from management can be heard at safety meetings. Those with managerial responsibilities say, "Be safe -- if you can't do it safe then don't do it." Employees roll their eyes.

When the meeting is over, the manager may say, "Okay, now that the safety meeting is over, get back to work and let's see some production." Employee translation: "My manager wants me to take short-cuts and not get hurt!" This is how management's safety rhetoric becomes blah, blah, blah.

Safety rhetoric from employees can be heard when a worker says, "I can't do this job safely." Management hears, "I don't want to do the job." This is because the employee offers no additional information to clarify why it is unsafe to work. In my experience of 17 years in field work and more than 18 years of consulting to high-risk industry, the safety rhetoric problem seems to be two-fold: first a lack of clear, consistent and concise shared goals for safety and second, a lack of understanding of how to be safe.

Learn to recognize the safety rhetoric -- whether it comes out of your mouth or someone else's. As you hear it, consider ways that you can improve the message with clarity around the goals for the job at hand. Also, discuss how to make each and every job a safe one. This will lower your safety rhetoric rate and this will lead to a work environment where Nobody Gets Hurt.

© 2011 Potter and Associates International, Inc. Carl Potter, CSP, CMC and Deb Potter, PhD, CMC work with organizations that want to create an environment where nobody gets hurt. As advocates of a zero-injury workplace, they are speakers, authors, and consultants to industry. As a general aviation pilot and certified flight instructor, Carl enjoys infusing aviation safety principles into his workplace programs. For information about bringing Carl and Deb to your company or your next conference, contact them at Potter and Associates International, Inc. 800.259.6209 or www.carlpotter.com.

To learn more about Carl's work, visit:
 
www.safetyandthesupervisor.com

www.hazardrecognitionworkshop.com