By Debbie Dickinson

Where solid safety cultures exist, companies also often see good profit margins because rework and damage to equipment and products is reduced and productivity is high.

Practically, strong safety cultures include many people at all levels of the organization. Owners and supervisors post safety reminders and include safety parameters in toolbox talks. Project planners and safety managers work diligently to identify potential hazards on a particular job site. Trained workers proactively implement risk reduction practices.

When safety is taken a step beyond mere compliance, serious accidents are prevented. However, several real-life accidents recently reported in the news serve as reminders that a single decision can take a worker across the line to a life-altering situation.

One common thread in each of the following incidents is that various technical skills and industry knowledge were required of the workers. The associated risks and potential hazards appear to have been well known, yet best practices were ignored.

Ground Conditions: After days of rain, it’s a sunny day in Minnesota, and the construction crew is back at work on a building that was important to the community. As a precast panel is being raised on the site, a videographer’s voice conveys his excitement at the progress and vision for the building’s use, until he realizes he’s filming a disaster in the making. The crane, out of level, begins to lose control of the load. The operator tries to jump from the crane as it tips, but he is buried and pinned in the soft, muddy dirt. The camera falls to the ground as the crew and observers rush to rescue the man, who they cannot reach in time.

Energized Power Lines: Two brothers in Georgia, one a crane operator and the other working for the first time on the crew, are laying underground utilities. A neighbor, who brings sweet tea and cookies every afternoon “because the crew works so hard and it is so hot,” still cries when she tells the story of the crane boom making contact with an overhead power line at the jobsite. The workers and neighbors heard one man’s screams as he watched his brother fall to the ground, electrocuted and dead.

Taking Shortcuts: A Tennessee lineman remembered, as his bucket rose, that he had left his insulated gloves in his truck. It would be fine. It was an easy task that he had done many times safely. His wife was expecting their first child. He lived to hold his baby girl, without the use of the two hands he lost that day.

Closing the gap

In each of these examples, decisions were made along the way that impacted the outcome. In some case those decisions may have been influenced by managers and supervisors.

Back in the day, leaders were commonly promoted through the ranks. That system had pros and cons. Often an organization lost some of its most skilled people by making managers out of them rather than looking at the value of their skills. On top of that, the organization didn’t always train them well to be effective managers. More common these days, managers and supervisors often either have not had updated training and credentials for years or have come through a management development program with a cursory level of knowledge and experience of the work to be performed. We need to close that gap so managers and supervisors have intimate knowledge of the work at hand—not to a level of being able to perform the work, but at a minimum having first-hand knowledge of how the task is performed, what tools are needed, and most importantly how to do jobs well.

For example, if you’re going to be managing a rigging crew, making purchasing and strategy decisions, spend some time qualifying and learning what the trade involves. Managers of crane operations should at least understand how to calculate load charts so they can rent, purchase, or utilize existing equipment.

Providing managers and supervisors with updated training, renewed credentials and qualifications are ways to close the gap. Another method is to encourage people to serve on various industry safety committees, and to allow them time in their schedules to actively participate in meetings. Managers and supervisors can get involved in standard-writing through professional organizations such as ASME, and participate in industry forums from a safety or skill-development perspective.

One person can’t realistically learn enough about all the different craft skills in the organization. A positive way to divide and conquer that gap involves looking at the management team and recognizing the various team members who wear different hard hats and could be advocates for different crafts and skills.

Then there are excellent assessment tools available to really understand the company’s mission statement and its business goals. Use of these tools results in a realistic picture of how the company is doing, and the investment doesn’t have to be expensive, or the effort very time-consuming.

Until managers and supervisors are just as familiar as craft workers with the tasks to be performed, their strategies for an injury-free workplace are at risk. By closing the gap between leaders’ plans and the work performed, safety increases. When the gap is closed, jobs are described in terms of actual tasks, less time is wasted, and fewer materials and machines are damaged. But the biggest win is that lives, limbs, and futures are preserved.