700 Introduction to Safety Management

Deming's 14 Points Applied to Safety

Point 7: Adopt and institute leadership. The aim of supervision should be to help people and machines do a better job.

The key to adopting and instituting leadership, of course, lies at the top. Managers need to lead by example, action, and word. Successful leaders "care" about those they lead. After all, their success is tied to the success of their workers. The "servant leadership" model fits well into the ideas expressed by Deming and others.

There is no better way to demonstrate these principles of leadership than in making sure employees use safe work procedures in a workplace that is, itself, safe from hazards.

Ensuring safety is one of the most visible undertakings that management can take to show employees that they are not merely hired hands who can be replaced, but are valued human resources — part of the family.

Point 8: Drive out fear, so that everyone may work effectively for the company.

According to Deming, driving out fear is the most important strategy when implementing a Safety Management System. Management controls the workplace and influences the behavior and performance of its employees by creating cultural norms that dictate what are, and are not acceptable behaviors. Strategies using fear to control employee safety behaviors are rarely, if ever successful.

Management may rely solely on safety rules and progressive discipline to control performance, but it's never successful in producing anything beyond mere compliance. What develops from such a strategy is a controlling, compliance-driven climate of mistrust and disgust; only a shell of an effective safety and health management system.

In a world-class SMS, managers drive out fear through fact-finding to improve the system, not fault-finding to punish someone. They uncover and correct SMS weaknesses that have allowed unsafe work practices and hazardous conditions to exist. Management's motto is "Fix the system, not the blame."

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