Am I doing somebody’s job?

Before asking this question myself in 2013, I was doing and wasting a lot of time for workplace inspection, incident investigations, checking JHA’s, reporting hazards, developing policy & all procedures, totally everything by myself and get reviewed by relevant departments. There was actually no time to think about Culture harmonization and out-of-box and meditate on safety matters, techniques, technology and philosophy.

Then I questioned myself (unfortunately after 8 years later serving in safety industry…he he): Do I know about workplace better than area supervisor or manager? Answer was NO and found out that I don’t know about kitchen better than chief cook, about mine better than engineers & managers and about vehicle better than its driver. Finally realized: I’m a Consultant to Departments not Leader to do Hazard Identification, JHA, Workplace Inspection, Risk assessment, Incident Investigation and Law Compliance etc.

After this understanding, my philosophy had been totally changed; SAFETY job should be done by professionals and workplace owner (Supervisor & Manager) who knows the workplace better than me. It was not easy to explain my philosophy to Departments because they don’t want to get more responsibility and paper work. So I asked a permission to change the Culture from Executive Director and he accepted. Based on his approval, I communicated with HR Department and following actions happened:

Job descriptions at HR Department are changed and included safety responsibilities that supervisor leads incident investigation, workplace inspection must be done by all employees, safe work procedures must be compiled by area supervisor and his/her team…
Employees signed on changed Job Descriptions and accepted their safety responsibilities.
Safety staffs became Consultants to Team Leaders.
Training is followed how do conduct WPI, JHA, and Take 5 and compile Procedures, Investigations, Mentoring.
On site mentoring took over 16 months…

What were the benefits?

Since Supervisors/Managers are fully accountable for his/her team, injuries and near misses are reduced significantly.
Safety officers have more time to spend on mentoring employees who have lower performances in safety and advice employees how to act safely. Safety manager has more time to clear his Vision, Strategy, and Plan and meditate on continuous improvement.
Visible Leadership in safety are appeared everywhere starting from workers. Everyone conducts workplace inspections, identifies hazards, and takes control actions, sharing best practices.
Workers involve at Safety Culture Harmonization and initiate better ideas to improve his/her workplace safe-being.
Workplace condition is improved.
Sustainable production and reputation among public is enhanced.
Employees and their families, Company and Public (no injury = no compensation claim) won-won-won from these changes.

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