Measuring the success of a safety program by referring to numbers of injuries and illnesses is tantamount to confusing cause and effect. Get the program right, and the numbers will probably follow. Of course, there's also the luck factor - good and bad - that needs to be accounted for. What safety professionals need is an evaluation approach that puts the cart before the horse, and not the other way around.

Keeping the Cart before the Horse

Another way to measure the soundness of a safety program is to consider whether it incorporates all the necessary elements. I've seen all kinds of safety programs and in my opinion, there are four things that all world-class programs have. How many of them does your program have? If you have all four, it's a pretty good sign that you're doing things right.

1. Recognition of the Need to Do More to Prevent Injuries and Illnesses

Recognition is a vital element of any safety program. In fact, it's the engine that makes a program go. Recognition of the need to do more to prevent injury and illness might come from several sources - high workers' compensation premiums, OSHA citations or difficulty in recruiting workers.

2. Integration of Traditional Safety Elements

A good program incorporates a blend of what I call traditional safety measures. This includes administrative elements such as written policies and procedures and engineering controls such as machine guards and ventilation systems.

3. A Joint Observation Process

Companies with first rate safety programs introduce an observation process, with management and workers' input, to watch out for both unsafe acts that need to be corrected and safe acts that need to be reinforced. This process stems from the importance of behavior and the recognition of the effectiveness of teamwork in ensuring health and safety. The best companies, safety-wise, encourage workers on the floor to accompany the supervisor and safety director on their rounds.

4. Employee Skills

Employees need to be taught the right "skills" so they can keep themselves safe. Human beings are born with a survival instinct. But they're not born with an innate sense of how to use protective equipment or how dangerous machines operate. These are things that need to be taught. The safety program needs to inculcate in workers the practical, relevant and easy to understand skills they need to manage themselves effectively and safely.

SUPER BOWL SAFETY

STEELERS

What They Do: Steelers feed iron ore, scrap metal and other additives into massive furnaces. They then pour the molten metal output into semifinished shapes which are rolled, drawn, cast and extruded to form sheets, rods, bars, tubes and wires.

How Often They Get Hurt: Steelers summon up romantic images of classic laborers toiling in the heat of furnaces and doing dangerous jobs. And so they do. But modern machinery, equipment and safety training have dramatically reduced the risk of injury in the steel industry. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 2003 rate of occupational injury and illness to steelers was 7.0 per 100 workers in iron and steel mills and 10.5 in steel product manufacturing. By way of comparison, the injury and illness rate for all of manufacturing for the same period was 6.8.

What Protective Equipment They Use: Hardhats, safety shoes, protective glasses, ear plugs and productive clothing are a must for most steelers.

STEELERS QUIZ

1. How many Super Bowls have the Pittsburgh Steelers won in their history?

a. 2
b. 3
c. 4
d. 5

2. Match the following famous Steelers with the positions they played:

Franco Harris
Terry Bradshaw
Lynn Swann
Joe Greene

a. Quarterback
b. Defensive End
c. Running Back
d. Wide Receiver

3. What was Joe Greene's nickname?

a. Greene Death
b. Mean
c. Too Tall
d. The Minister of Defense

4. Who coached the legendary Steelers teams?

a. Vince Lombardi
b. Bill Cowher
c. Chuck Noll
d. Don Shula

5. What was the nickname of the Steelers' defense?

a. The Steel Curtain
b. The Fearsome Foursome
c. Doomsday
d. The Purple People Eaters

6. Which of the following teams did the Steelers NOT beat in the Super Bowl?

a. Dallas Cowboys
b. L.A. Rams
c. Minnesota Vikings
d. Washington Redskins

ANSWERS:

1. The Steelers have won four Super Bowls; 2. Franco Harris, Running Back; Terry Bradshaw, Quarterback; Lynn Swann, Wide Receiver, Joe Greene, Defensive End; 3. "Mean" Joe Greene; 4. Chuck Noll; 5. The Steel Curtain; 6. The Steelers never played and thus never had a chance to beat the Redskins in a Super Bowl.

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