Inappropriate Management Behaviors
Safety is too important for supervisors and managers to merely "encourage." They must display and insist on safe behaviors that produce safe conditions.
Failure to do so may produce unsafe employee behaviors and hazardous conditions at all levels of the organization. As a manager’s position and responsibility increase, the impact of their behavior increases as well.
Examples of unsafe management-level decisions and behaviors include:
- Managers unintentionally create hazards or exhibit unsafe behaviors: This is the most common reason management-level hazardous conditions and unsafe behaviors exist. Inadequate education and training, unreasonable workloads, or other pressures may prevent top management from formulating adequate safety systems, middle management from implementing them, and supervisors from overseeing the implementation daily.
- Managers intentionally create hazards or exhibit unsafe behaviors: We want to think this never happens, but the truth is, it does. Thankfully, it's probably quite rare. Intentional unsafe behaviors usually take the form of "ignoring" established safety policies and rules. A more serious situation arises when a supervisor or manager directs employees to perform actions that create a hazard or expose the employee to an existing hazard without proper protection.
The solution to both types of management-level behavior failures is to educate supervisors, managers, and executives on the importance of safety and the need to demonstrate safety leadership.
Knowledge Check Choose the best answer for the question.
5-5. What is the most common reason management-level hazardous conditions exist?
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