Empowerment works better at some organizations than others. Determining if it will work for you requires an honest appraisal of your existing corporate and safety culture. Let’s consider empowerment from the perspective of workers and management and the convergence of their interests through the safety committee.

Empowerment via Safety Committees

The way to turn empowerment from a theory to a course of action is to organize employees into teams that cut across the old boundaries. Team members must be trained, given adequate information and set free to use their creativity and knowledge. They can run as fast as they can but must be pointed in a general direction dictated by the organization’s shared vision and mission.

In the realm of safety, the joint health and safety committees is the institutional key to empowerment because it provides workers a mechanism to take charge of their own safety. In Canada, it’s mandatory for larger workplaces to have committees. A few U.S. states require committees but OSHA doesn’t. Still, many U.S. companies have established committees either voluntarily or in response to union pressure.

But committees set up for the sake of having a committee aren’t what empowerment is about. To be truly empowered, committees must have clear mandates and roles. They must be involved not only in pointing out problems but resolving them.

Traditional Safety Committees

Dan Petersen describes the differences between traditional, paper committees and empowered ones. Traditional safety program characteristics typically include:

• A central, head office individual with responsibility for corporate safety;
• A team of safety specialist on staff, or one local staff safety specialist;
• Safety is deemed a staff function with central responsibility residing in a manager;
• Rules, standards and regulations are prescribed by management.
• Little, if any, line commitment, ownership, responsibility or accountability for safety; and
• Minimal worker involvement in accident prevention or safety management issues.

Empowered Safety Committees

Typical characteristics of progressive, empowered safety committees:

• Workers and work teams take responsibility for accident prevention and safety performance;
• Staff safety specialist employed as a safety coordinator and support function;
• Increased emphasis on total communication with all stakeholders;
• Executive and senior management provide strategic leadership for safety strategy and leave content and initiatives to workers and work teams; and
• Total integration of safety performance into all job responsibilities and accountabilities.

Which one of these models sounds more effective to you? Which one does your current committee more closely resemble?

Conclusion

Empowerment isn’t a new idea; nor is it a cure for all ills. But a strategically managed empowerment effort in which workers not only buy-in but participate can go a long way toward building a successful safety culture at your organization.

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