Any safety professional will tell you that supervisors are the linchpin of safety. But getting supervisors to understand, accept and perform their role in ensuring safety is often a challenge. "It's all about accountability," says Newfoundland safety consultant Wayne Pardy. "You need to tell supervisors what you expect of them and apply those expectations to assess their performance," he explains.

This series will show you how to create job descriptions for supervisors that address safety concerns based on the Canadian model of the Internal Responsibility System (IRS). Part 1 will explain the role of the job description in establishing accountability.

How Job Descriptions Promote Accountability

Accountability is a fancy word for telling people in your company what you expect them to do and making sure they do it. Accountability is vital to every aspect of operations. "Everybody in the organization needs to know what's expected of them so they can tell if they're doing their job," explains Pardy.

Job descriptions are one of the tools management can use to communicate its expectations. To lay the groundwork for real accountability, job descriptions must be clearly worded, action-oriented and specific. "If the job description doesn't convey management's expectations, the accountability system can break down," explains Pardy.

Caveat: Just telling people what functions you want them to do isn't enough. You must also train them to perform those functions. For example, if you expect supervisors to investigate accidents, you need to show them how. "This isn't a skill people are just born with," Pardy explains. "You can't have accountability in a meaningful sense unless you give employees the necessary knowledge, skills and support."

Supervisors' Accountability for Safety

At many companies, there needs to be more accountability for health and safety. "Historically, safety has lagged behind other areas of the business as far as accountability is concerned," Pardy explains. "One reason is that safety has been conceived as some vague notion of motherhood - a 'nice thing to do' for workers." Because of this, responsibility for safety has fallen on everybody and thus nobody in particular.

Supervisor job descriptions reflect this. The IRS assigns safety-related responsibilities to each of the various workplace stakeholders including officers, directors, workers and, yes, supervisors. So companies should have job descriptions for supervisors (and each other stakeholder groups) that clearly and specifically define their roles and responsibilities in ensuring safety. But not many companies seem to be doing this. I've noticed three patterns:

1. Silence
Some companies use job descriptions that talk all about production and quality control but don't say a word about safety. "Safety isn't something that needs to be spelled out to a good supervisor; if you just hire competent people, they'll know what to do," explains a safety officer at one of these companies.

2. Lip Service
Other job descriptions talk about safety but not in a meaningful way. They typically mention that safety is part of the supervisors' responsibility or pay homage to safety as a value. But they don't tell supervisors what they're expected to do. Examples:

- "Supervisors shall play an active role in safeguarding the health and safety of the workplace";
- "You are responsible for taking any and all steps necessary to protect employees and others against occupational accidents, injuries and illnesses"; and
- "Supervisors must ensure that all work is carried out safely and in accordance with all applicable regulatory, industry and other pertinent standards."

3. General
Another approach is to list safety-related functions in a broad and vague way. For example, one job description says supervisors are responsible for "holding safety meetings" but doesn't give the crucial details like what "safety meetings" are and how often they should be held.

Conclusion

Next week, in Part 2, I'll show you how to create a Model Job Description for a supervisor and provide a sample form. In Part 3, I'll explain how to seal the accountability deal by performing a safety-minded supervisor job assessment.

MEMBER REPLY

Pet Peeves & 'Common Sense'

I have maintained for some time now that "common sense" has become an oxymoron and that sense is no longer common. However, from a legal standpoint, I suspect that common sense is the vernacular for the "reasonable man" rule – would a reasonable man or woman do this or not do that given the same set of circumstances.

Of course, an increasing lack of common sense means that manufacturers need to place a myriad of warnings on products, since so many consumers are common-sense-challenged. Do we really have to be told that something will be hot when it comes out of a microwave or that smoking next to a gasoline tank is unsafe? Will someone successfully sue you or me because there was not a sign next to the stair rail saying "grasp this firmly with one hand continuously until leaving last step?"

One can train an employee til the cows come home, have signage all over the workplace, but can you possibly train and sign EVERY potential hazard? Where does training, mitigating, etc., end and common sense come into play? Or have we become a nation of idiots who blame every mishap on the other guy or fate, NEVER on ourselves.

Gerald Edgar

PET PEEVES

OHSA - The Pet Peeve Mascot.

"I've Always Done It That Way"

My all-time biggest pet peeve is the phrase: "I don't know what happened. I've always done it that way" or some variation. If I only had a nickel for every time I heard that from an employee, or worse yet, a company official! Nothing gives me that fingernails-down-the-chalkboard sensation quite like it, especially after you've just talked about it in a training class the week before. And it's usually followed by "it was just a fluke."  Statistics don't mean much to people like that, and now that it happened, we all know lightening never strikes twice in the same place, right?  Maybe I should just start charging a nickel.

Thanks for letting me vent. I hope you publish this, so I can take some consolation in finding out I'm not alone!

Tony Tripi
Tripi Consulting, Inc.
biotron@bellsouth.net

Do you have a pet peeve related to health and safety? Share them with the members of SafetyXChange. Send your pet peeve to catherinej@bongarde.com and let us know if we can use your name/company/email. We won't list any of the foregoing information unless you specifically say we can.

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