Does Poor Safety Equal Poor Management?

Many high-ranking leaders in various organizations have been quoted as saying that poor safety results are an indicator of other poor management practices. In interviews with top officials, the majority indicated that they demand excellence in safety from contractors and suppliers for the very reason that they view poor safety results as a warning sign of other management or performance weaknesses. Following this lead, many contractor management firms have vaunted safety as a primary condition of being included in the list of approved providers. But is safety necessarily linked to other performance areas, and if so, which ones? And what is the link?

To better answer this question, consider the potential causes for poor safety performance:

• Leaders of some organizations simply view safety as a low priority. This view can originate from other, more-valued priorities or from a philosophy that accidents are inevitable and unavoidable. Sadly, some organizations value the management of capital or technology more than the management of people and don’t appreciate the importance of human capital.

• Some organizations think safety cannot be managed the same way as other priorities and delegate safety management to specialists. This separation of safety from other business priorities almost always results in workers giving safety less effort than the priorities managed by true organizational leaders.

• Other organizations try to manage safety but fail. The failures can come from a number of management flaws, a lack of meaningful metrics or simply the lack of an overarching strategy for safety.

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