During December, we conducted an on-line survey of a large number of organizations, both locally and across North America, to determine the workplace safety practices that were most commonly used. More importantly, the response from 126 organizations across all business sectors and employment sizes has allowed us to identify practices that have a higher potential to drive organizational excellence in the occupational safety and health arena.

In order to classify the respondents, we first asked if they believed their organization was better at safety than most others in their business sector.  Sixty-seven percent of respondents agreed with that statement and are identified below as "better." Those who disagreed are shown as "poorer." Here are highlights of our findings.

While 45 percent of both groups reported that safety was driven primarily by the safety director or manager, the driver in the better organizations was management 36 percent of the time, but only 21 percent of the time in poorer organizations. It's been our experience that management leadership is essential to a highly effective safety process.

Safety committees are required in some states (but not in New York) and are often considered valuable tools for management to involve employees and reach consensus on strategic safety initiatives at all organizational levels. In 68 percent of the better operations, a joint employee/management committee exists, but such a committee is functioning in only 41 percent of the poorer organizations. However, when it comes to effectiveness, 41 percent of the better organizations reported their committees were "very effective." None of the poorer respondents made such a report.

In looking for a link between safety and profitability, we asked if the organization was doing well financially. In the better organizations, 90 percent agreed with this statement. The agreement figure for the poorer units was 62 percent.

Since poor working conditions (clutter, crowding, work organization) are typically viewed as visual indicators of poor underlying safety and productivity, we asked if the workplace was neat, clean and well organized. Sixty-nine percent of the better organizations gave a positive response. Just 31 percent of the poorer agreed.

External resources also appear to be important to safety in the survey companies. About half of both the better and poorer organizations use external consultants and also belong to the local chamber of commerce.  Nearly 40 percent of the better companies also belong to the National Safety Council.
If you'd like to know more about our findings, or want to discuss what the findings suggest for your operation, please contact me.