According to Alliance Safety Council National Programs Safety Specialist Duane Smith, if safety were an absolute, the industry would have figured it out by now. Smith has put a different twist on a few safety concepts, and many in the industry might find some of his theories and opinions a bit atypical but also enlightening and agreeable at the same time. He recently spoke at the Louisiana Governor’s Safety & Health Conference in Baton Rouge, and his presentation began with a disclaimer on the screen: This is me. These are my ideas that don’t belong to the Alliance Safety Council. I’m not representing them. This is based on my life experiences and history.
What Smith believes is from his 30-plus years of industry experience.
“When it comes to safety and doing the right thing, I believe there are only two reasons people act the way they do,” Smith stated. “The first reason why people do the right thing is because it’s rule-based. Second, there are those people who are always going to do the right thing because they see some value and understand.”
According to Smith, the job of safety personnel is to move people from rule-based to value-based. He believes there’s only one thing that makes people go from rule-based to value-based safety habits: a significant emotional event.
“The problem — and what frustrates those responsible for safety — is those significant emotional events depend on the people who are experiencing them,” Smith said. “A significant emotional event changes your life forever, but everyone is affected by them differently. Safety personnel need to get people to see the value in why they do things.”
Smith went on to address a few of his “safety myths.”
Safety myth: ‘You are in control of your safety performance’
According to Smith, what contributes to safety results are policies, procedures, and culture. But there is also a third piece of the pie that contributes to safety results: luck.
“I know those involved with safety aren’t supposed to talk about luck,” Smith said. “How many times have we been out there and said, ‘Wow, that was close,’ though? Luck is a very foundational part of our safety programs, and that’s a problem. Some people’s luck factor is bigger than others, but I guarantee luck is a contributor to everyone’s safety results.”
Safety myth: ‘People can be perfect’
According to Smith, we often hear people say, “Nobody’s perfect” or “People make mistakes.” As a result, Smith asked the question, “Why is safety the only area we believe people can be perfect?”
“If you think you’re going to completely eliminate human error, you’re going to go crazy and you’re going to go broke,” Smith said. “All we can try to do is design the systems that are going to manage the human error that we’re going to have to tolerate. I know this is heresy to say this during a safety meeting. But you have to be able to tolerate people not always doing the right thing all day, every day. You can have the best safety culture in the world, but people are still going to make honest mistakes.”
Safety myth: ‘Zero is a reasonable goal’
The definition of “zero” in the safety world means no recordable events. According to Smith, the idea of zero is an arbitrary number and doesn’t necessarily signify anything.
“It’s a line out there that was drawn in the sand,” he said. “But the idea of TRIR and recordability is ruling our lives. Sometimes we get so focused on whether we are going to cross the zero line that we lose our focus on what’s really important.
“You never see the ‘what could have happened’ factor. We give ourselves credit for luck because we show our safety results. Sites have close calls and near-misses, and they need to be treated as if they were absolute incidents.”
