Awe Safety, what a fun and joyous topic! I know exactly where you are coming from Doc, as I have walked a mile in your shoes and the shoes of your new safety professionals. And to be quite honest, it was walking in your shoes that made me walk to the other side of the fence. I got tired of hearing senior management "SAY" that "safety is number one" then watch as they mocked the safety efforts, canceled safety meetings for production, not participate in critical investigations because of timing conflicts with finance meetings, etc. You name it; I saw it! I figured the only way for me to really walk the talk was to be the leader of the pack, so now 12 years later I am now a full time safety professional doing all that I can do to make people sit up and take notice that safety is not about making your 8 hour day into an 8.5 hour day; nor is it about making you less productive. Is it just the opposite of all those things! Let's not look at our jobs by hours in a day, but rather years in a career. When we look at some of the more serious injuries occurring in the workplace today, we see many debilitating injuries that require weeks, months and sometimes years off from work or at least on "restricted work duty". Now think back to how many times you will have to work that half hour extra each day to make up for the 2,200 hours you missed last year because of that one simple and quick shortcut you took, which put you out of work. Now that’s just you, what about those injuries that ruin careers due to loss of vision in an eye or complete blindness, or the loss of a limb or appendage that keeps you from working in that high paying job you use to have. What about your family? Did that one simple and quick shortcut you took cost them?

Off my soapbox... now to be more specific:
A) 6-7 hours of training is non-sense. No one, not even the safety professionals doing the training can go thru that many hours of safety training and retain it all, and keep in mind they are all about safety! The workers they are training are being bombarded with quality, cost and productivity as well. I concur with electure's comments about breaking the training into manageable segments in an environment the workers are use to. I have found this works wonders for retention and more importantly buy-in. When the worker's supervisor is the one delivering the message, AND they do it with passion, there is MUCH MORE credibility to the message.

b) As they say, Rome was not built in a day. if your company just hired some full time safety professionals, you are in for quite a ride the next 3-5 years. With the proper message, support and employee involvement, you may begin to see a shift in attitudes about safety. Lord forbid you have a horrible workplace accident that is very visible to many workers, as this unfortunate event sometimes can be just the prooving ground to get the buy in from all levels. UNFORTUNATELY it is TOO LATE for the injured or deceased, but it should be a major wake up call for the rest of you. I can tell you that in a world-class safety culture we celebrate setting production records right along celebrating safety performance. The two should be recognized hand in hand, so as to prove without a shadow of a doubt that safety is a partner with production and not a deterrent.

C) Makjor mistake when the safety team are the company "deputies". They are technical professionals that are there to be called upon when issues arise that are not covered by SOP's or training. They are the Safety Cops! Unfortunately many young safety professionals fall into this trap, me included. It comes from frustration and fear of failure. When management is not doing their job and enforcing the safety rules equally across the board with other procedures such as production, quality and human resources, then the safety team will feel they have to do something and this is their answer. As a consultant now, I can tell you that I see this weekly. And when I see it, I find several things in ALL these cases. a) management can't even spell safety much less manage it. Look at the training sign in sheets and no one from management attends, what’s this message? b) frontline supervisors are not supervisors, but glorified workers that have a lot of knowledge and experience doing the job. They have had little to no training in supervision, much less been told what their roles and responsibilities are within the safety efforts. c) no one reports to the safety team, so their ability to actually enforce the rules is small to none. Enforcement of any rule must come from superiors that are respected.

Lastly, a safety professional should always take a step back before intervening in an unsafe act or condition. Think before you speak and see if it is obvious as to why this employee is working unsafely. Do they know they are breaking a rule; do they know they are working unsafely, etc? ALWAYS, and I mean ALWAYS, explain to the worker why what he/she is doing is unsafe. Don't use OSHA rules in the conversation, only to explain why OSHA passed the rule and what the rule is actually trying to prevent. We should never leave an intervention with the worker scratching their head and wondering what just happened. We shold leave with a clear verbal understanding that the worker understands that what they were doing was risky because.... and more importantly how they can accomplish their task in a more safe and often times more productive manner.

Point your safety team to my FREE Safety Services at www.SAFTENG.net

Everything on the site, including my weekly newsletter and daily incident alerts are FREE. The site is meant to be a resource for safety professionals that need real life resources to help improve their organizations safety performance. I am certain they will find some useful info on the site. You may want to even visit/subscribe, as about 15% of my subscribers are the "working people" of this world, but are concerned for their safety and that of their co-workers.

Bryan Haywood www.SAFTENG.net