I have a message to all you safety directors out there who are feeling the pinch of recession: Having a passion for safety is not enough. Like it or not, your program is beholden to upper management for financial support. To attract and retain the corporate resources to maintain a viable program, you must run your department like a business. Never is this more true than in these recessionary times. Here are some fundamental principles to keep in mind.

Identify Costs

Like every other operation, the safety program is subject to budgetary constraints. You don’t get resources just because “you need them.” You must justify your expenditures in terms of dollars and cents.

The starting point: Before you determine what safety goods and services to buy, you must analyze and justify current expenditures. Let’s use safety equipment as an example. Start by reviewing current budget items. Identify costs of safety equipment you’re using now such as safety glasses, goggles, boots, gloves, acid suits, flame resistant clothing, hard hats, hearing protection, emergency medical equipment, etc. Current budget items also include the cost of capital equipment such as sprinkler systems, firefighting equipment, training courses, upgrades identified from insurance audits, etc.

Once you identify where safety expenditures are going, take stock. Is money being wasted?  Is it accomplishing your goals? Are you getting the best value for your dollar? Are there opportunities to trim costs without hurting performance? For example, some employers use contractors to maintain first aid cabinets at a monthly cost. Explore whether you can reduce costs by getting medical supplies via mail order and stocking first aid cabinets yourself.

Illustrate Control of Costs

When you treat your department like a business, your desire to control costs will become apparent. Finish projects on schedule and under budget and make it a point to let upper management know that you were able to return some of the allocated funds. If you don’t market yourself, nobody will.

Another way to illustrate cost control is to include non-capital expenditure items in your safety budgeting. Items that include little or no financial support could include working with engineers to help design a safety interlock or a machine guard and doing field evaluations yourself rather than budgeting extra manpower expense. Coupling an extensive safety budget with such clearly beneficial low-cost actions may help your department avoid being labeled as wasteful or indulgent.

Tie Budget Items to Standards

The next step in planning is to show how each safety expenditure is directly linked to compliance. Tie budgeted items to an applicable standard including legal regulations like OSHA and EPA, voluntary standards like ANSI, NFPA, NEC, UL and NEMA, and industry standards such as (in the case of oil companies) American Petroleum Institute, Chemical Manufacturer’s Association, Synthetic Organic Chemical Manufacturer’s Association and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

If upper management won’t support an item, point to the specific law or standard that requires the item. You can also remind management of its accountability to ensure compliance. To reinforce the message, ask management to sign off or initial a list of budgeted safety items that expresses either management’s support for the expenditure or its deliberate decision not to incur it and assume responsibility for the attendant risk. There’s an example of this in the TOOLS section of SafetyXChange.

Conclusion

In these troubled times, it takes fortitude and courage for safety directors to stand up and defend their programs. But moral courage isn’t enough. You also better have the budgetary numbers, analysis and compliance justification to back up your safety expenditures.

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