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.

HEROES OF WORKPLACE SAFETY

"Vice Admiral Robert FitzRoy: Saved lives by developing a system to forecast storms at sea."

Vice Admiral Robert FitzRoy

By Glenn Demby

Robert FitzRoy joined the British Royal Navy at the tender age of 12. The year was 1819. FitzRoy, who happened to be a descendant of King Charles II, passed the Lieutenant's exam and became a commissioned officer seven years later. He was assigned to a 235-ton survey ship: The H.M.S.Beagle.

The first expedition of the Beagle to South America in 1828 was eventful. The Captain committed suicide and FitzRoy assumed command. But it was the second expedition in 1831 that would make the Beagle famous. FitzRoy was accompanied by a young naturalist named Charles Darwin. FitzRoy's wrote two books chronicling the expedition.

FitzRoy would go on to have an illustrious naval, scientific and political career before committing suicide in 1865. His contribution to safety began in1854, when he became head of a new government department formed to collect and analyze data about weather at sea.

Bearing the title Meteorological Statist to the Board of Trade, FitzRoy developed a system to predict, or as FitzRoy described it, "forecast" the weather. The system involved the creation of 15 land stations that received telegraph transmissions from captains at sea. The data would then be coordinated and a forecast would be made. This provided captains advance warning of storms and saved the lives of countless seamen.

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