Saying that "safety is everybody's responsibility" is tantamount to saying that it's nobody's responsibility in particular. In Part 1 of this series, I discussed the importance of defining and assigning specific safety-related responsibilities to each job level in the organization, position by position. I'd like to continue the discussion on assignment of safety responsibilities but shift the focus to the macro level, if you will. More precisely, I want to examine broad nationally-based concepts of safety responsibility, particularly the Canadian Internal Responsibility System (IRS).

The IRS

In the U.S., the IRS is synonymous with tax collection. In Canada, it has a different meaning, at least among safety professionals. The IRS is a theory that assigns responsibility for workplace safety among the various stakeholders - that is, interested parties. The IRS concept that safety is a shared responsibility among workers, supervisors, managers, contractors and others is the philosophical underpinning of Canadian occupational health and safety laws. It recognizes that all stakeholders at all levels of the organization must have a clear understanding of their role in safety.

In the IRS, the name of the game is ongoing system documentation, review and regular worker input. The core idea of the IRS is the need for workers and management to continuously work at creating a safer workplace environment. In other words, workers and management are both supposed to participate in the development of the system that serves their mutual interests.

A Comparison

The IRS represents a stark contrast to the approach taken by businesses in the US and other countries that struggle to come up with new and wonderful incentives to get workers to perform some unnatural activity to which they're averse. Since it's rooted in workers' natural interests, the IRS holds much promise for worker motivation, empowerment and recognition from a health and safety perspective.

The Canadian IRS has been patterned, to a degree, on similar systems used in the UK and some Scandinavian countries. Occupational health and safety in Scandinavia has historically been rooted in self-regulation. And it's been largely successful. In Norway, for example, companies have experienced observable increases in safety and health awareness, in addition to improved risk assessment by following the principle of worker involvement and ownership under the internal control system.

Implications for Safety

One potential benefit of the Canadian IRS approach to safety is that it imposes clear and specific safety-related responsibilities at all levels of an organization from the boardroom to the shoproom - and even outside the organization. For example, the OHS laws of the Canadian provinces, impose safety duties on contractors, suppliers, employers and workers. Several provinces, including Ontario, have specific sections enumerating the duties of corporate officers and directors and supervisors.

Conclusion

The Internal Responsibility System leaves room for other approaches. It can accommodate both high level and low level safety incentive or recognition approaches. While many approaches to traditional safety incentives have the worker as the only focus, the utilization of an effective safety incentive and reward system can ensure that, strategically speaking, all human resources within the organization play a part and make a contribution to improved safety performance.

MEMBER REPLY

What Counts Is Performing, Not Assigning Roles

I just finished reading the article by Wayne Pardy, and I cannot disagree with him more on his comment about safety being everyone's responsibility and thus nobody's in particular absent the assigning of specific safety roles position by position. In Ontario, the Health and Safety Act and regulations define who's responsible for what. Everyone from employer to worker has a responsibility for health and safety. The problem is not assigning responsibilities but getting everyone to do what's necessary to meet those responsibilities.

Chris Keeping
Tomlinson Group

GO FIGURE

The Health of the American Worker

More and more companies are turning to wellness programs to control healthcare costs. The theory is that employees are less apt to get sick and injured if they develop a healthier lifestyle. But getting the employee to buy in is a big challenge. Consider these sobering statistics:

23 to 30: The percentage of U.S. workers that smoke

55: The percentage of workers that are overweight

29: The percentage with high blood pressure

10: The percentage suffering from depression

80: The percentage that don't exercise regularly

30: The percentage prone to lower back pain

30: The percentage that have cardiovascular disease

6 to 9: The percentage of workers that have diabetes

35: The percentage under significant stress

50: The percentage that don't wear seatbelts

Source: Society for Human Resources Management

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