What Does Safety Mean To You?

Safety. It’s a part of every workplace, or should be.

Safety has changed over the years. In a business I worked in, I was told by long term employees they were safer when they could take a six pack on board with them. The prevalence of signs everywhere was a cause for more than a few jokes. We seemed to be creating ‘dumber and dumber’. No-one needed to think anymore. And let’s not talk about common sense. We all know what has happened to that!

There appears to be three schools of thought regarding safety in the workplace. One school of thought is safety is a core value of the business. Another school of thought refers to safety as a priority. And, dare I say it, the other school of thought has the message, ‘get it done quickly, safely if you can, you know the rules’. This workplace is living on luck, or borrowed time, getting work done quickly, having near misses (probably not reporting them, let alone hazards), and somehow not hurting anyone…yet. This is a subject for another article.

If we look at the definitions of value and priority, we should recognise a difference.

A value is an aspect of culture. Values are the deeply held beliefs about what is important in a business, the non-negotiables and how things are done around here.

Priority is defined by the Oxford Dictionary as ‘the fact or condition of being regarded or treated as more important than others’.

Safety is definitely important. But what happens when you have safety as a priority?

When safety is a core value it is part of everything we do all the time. Priorities, on the other hand, slip and change, especially under pressure. When we have competing priorities, and many of them, the level of our pressure will rise. This then means we will start making decisions from the limbic part of our brain, our survival mode. We will take unsafe risks and tend to not make the best decisions.

How is safety viewed in your workplace? What result is that having?