Dowdy safety image needs effective leadership
Effective leadership from senior management is a key feature of a positive safety culture as it determines how everybody else in the organisation will view and act upon safety issues.
Unfortunately, safety management is not a field that excites many senior managers and executives.
Attending to safety issues tends to be seen as something that is required by the legislature, is boring and has little `glamour’ attached to it, rather than as something that will be seen to contribute to profit and competitiveness. Perhaps because of safety’s perceived dowdy image, corporate safety initiatives are all too often delegated to middle and junior managers, with the result that senior managers tend to become even less involved in the management of safety (i.e. `I have successfully washed my hands of that problem!’).
Inevitably, this abdication of responsibility tends to result in safety management becoming too narrowly focused, with strategic direction being lost in the process as middle and junior management concern themselves with the `how’ of safety, rather than with the `what’ and `why’.
(more…)
