CEOs and HSE Professionals Voice Over Why Safety Deviations are Considered Normal

Abstract

Profit is a must, safety is foremost. Profit plus safety makes a better CEO or a good company. The Managing Director of ThyssenKrupp walks into the plant, talks to a worker who is at risk. A last minute risk assessment is necessary by everyone. If you keep on working toward a zero-harm objective, surely there must be only first aid cases. Every company is serious about risk management. Zero-harm is possible but we are not focused due to disengagement with safety culture and over-addiction to mobile usage. Everybody has to connect with people around. How do companies take care of stakeholders as well as shareholders is a serious challenge. Reason for a big incident may be due to the low-quality accessories or tools provided by your vendors or contractors. Most safety culture interventions are cosmetic not behavioural. Availability of skilled manpower is a great challenge in safety management in organisations. Is there a change in your safety culture? The reflections of this paper would help in this query. CEOs and HSE professionals reflect on why safety deviations are considered Normal across industry. Solutions are presented in four themes: emphasising principles of improving safety culture, understanding psychology of why safety deviations are considered normal, and the industry professionals’ need to enrich safety culture perspective, and importantly find out, is there a change in my organisational safety culture? The research highlights that companies must periodically self-assess, evaluate, benchmark and innovate their safety culture in order to prevent safety deviations that are considered normal by employees.

Keywords: CEOs, HSE Professionals, Safety Culture, Profit, Organisations, Deviations

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