Regardless of the sector in which an organisation operates, its activities are always goal-oriented in one way or another. The development of safety has been brought into the core of the activities of many organisations, at least at the level of celebratory speeches.
It is, of course, excellent that safety and its development are discussed, but it would be even better to actually do something about it. Very often, the catalyst for the development of safety is the organisation’s management or board waking up to a poor safety situation when updating the statutory accident insurance or in the event of a serious accident at work, for instance. High insurance premiums tend to stir organisations into action.
Why is it so important to set safety goals?
When it comes to safety, there is always room for improvement. Situations change and people come and go, which sets its own requirements for plans to improve safety. Even at best, individual tricks only produce short-lived results. It would be considerably better for the operational capability of business if the development of safety also bore fruit in the long run. Fortunately, this can be very much influenced by setting appropriate goals.
Admittedly, zero accidents at work sounds like a very attractive and ambitious development goal, but from a practical perspective, it is way too general. And as such, it is also doomed to fail. A good development goal is, of course, challenging, but there is no sense in heading straight towards failure if there are other alternatives. When setting goals for safety development, make sure that:
Your knowledge and understanding of the baseline situation is up to date
Setting goals for safety development may easily seem even too simple. Reducing accidents at work and increasing safety are very simple and understandable goals. This is a good starting point, but if the goals are only based on guesswork and a gut feeling, you can also forget about achieving them. For example, it may be that the underdevelopment of an organisation’s safety culture has not yet led to accidents or other threatening incidents, but an immeasurable amount of worry and concern is waiting right around the corner.
It is essential to gain a clear picture of the current situation before setting goals for the development of safety. The risks and hazards of work must be identified and assessed thoroughly and systematically so that the situational picture is accurate. You always climb up a tree by starting from the bottom branches, and safety culture is no exception in this sense.
A written plan is drawn up of the goals set for the development of safety
It is nice to envision marketable and over-the-top goals because they stick easily in people’s mind. Unfortunately, a catchy slogan is very rarely suitable as a guideline for practical action. In order for safety to be improved, the goals should be the subject of not only celebratory speeches, but also employees’ coffee table discussions, because that is the only way they will come together in practice. The development of safety is fundamentally about the introduction of new and more safety-aware operating models. Regardless of the words used to formulate a development goal, it is very important that it is also recorded in writing. The recorded goal for improving safety is the backbone of an evolving safety culture and needs a written plan for achieving the goals around it.
A careful development plan makes it easy to communicate the goals comprehensibly to all those involved in the development of safety. The safety development plan should distinguish between short-term and long-term goals. From the point of view of implementation, it is also useful to record in the plan the means and time limits within which the goals are to be achieved.
The nature of the safety goals is not irrelevant
When considering the goals to be set for the development of safety, special attention should be paid to ensuring that they are realistic. This applies not only to the goals, but also to the means and time limits set for achieving them.
Setting realistic goals allows sufficient resources to be allocated to the right areas. In addition to being realistic, the safety development goals should also be considered in terms of their relevance before they are set. If, for example, management’s motivation for the development of occupational safety is purely to achieve savings, it will certainly not be easy to put the development work into practice if there are no other justifications for the development goals.
The relevance of the safety development goals by no means takes away the fact that monitoring development also requires measurability. For example, goals related to accidents at work should be accompanied by an assessment of the impact of their frequency rate, as only measurable goals will make it possible to monitor development and direct resources to the right areas in the future.
Safety is managed by example
From the point of view of improving safety, it is critical that management visibly contributes to the safety development goals. A safety culture requires leadership, vision, resources and, of course, support. Management should stand behind the goals and the plans made to achieve them. Occupational safety is not created through the activities of safety committees and individual managers, but the outcome of development is the result of evolving operating models. And all employees in the organisation are ultimately responsible for these.
That is why leading by example is so important. The organisation’s personnel should understand the reasons and goals related to safety, but also their own contribution to achieving the goals. When management demonstrates its commitment to safety development by setting an example, it will be easier to embrace at the lower levels of the organisation, too.
An evolving safety culture as a result
The safety culture is proof of the state of safety in the organisation. An effective and evolving safety culture consists of guidance, competence and the ability to adopt new operating models. Systematic monitoring, assessment and development work are a natural part of the safety culture. Thus, the safety culture is not born out of thin air, but is the result of management, just like the other areas of the organisation’s operations.