700 Introduction to Safety Management

Deming's 14 Points Applied to Safety

Point 9: Break down barriers between departments. People must work as a team to foresee problems with the product or service.

Employers should only compete with their competitors, not themselves. Internal cooperation and external competition apply to safety as well. Cooperation among all internal functions is another key to effective safety.

Competitive safety incentive programs: Reactive safety incentive programs that challenge departments to compete against each other for rewards set up a system that may foster inappropriate behaviors by creating situations where peer pressure causes the withholding of injury reports. Consequently, the "walking wounded syndrome" develops that eventually results in increased injury costs and workers' compensation premiums. The performance of one employee impacts the success of others in the department. Employees will do virtually anything, in some cases, to ensure the department gets their pizza parties, saving bonds, or safety mugs.

The fix: Reward/recognize employees individually for appropriate behaviors: complying with safety rules, reporting injuries, and reporting workplace hazards. Reward activities that enhance cooperation.

Bringing management and labor together: Cooperation at all levels of the company to identify and correct hazards is very important. Of course, the team designed to promote this kind of cooperation is called the safety committee (or safety improvement team). A world-class safety management system will take advantage of the cross-functional makeup of safety committees to bring management and employees together in a non-adversarial relationship to evaluate programs and make recommendations for improvement in workplace safety.

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