As usual in the movie industry these days, superhero movies have been plentiful in 2013. Superman, Thor, Wolverine, and Iron Man were all on the big-screen being good guys and saving lives.

Already planned for next year are movies about Spider Man, Captain America, and the X-Men. We love our heroes.

And it’s not just the fictional ones we cheer. In real life, we celebrate the men and women who fight crime, who risk their lives to put out fires, who save people from disaster. Think of the massive outpouring of gratitude and admiration for police and firefighters when they save lives—or for normal people who step in and do so something heroic when it’s necessary.

Every day, at businesses everywhere, safety managers are also being heroes, saving lives. There’s nothing there to make a movie about, or to make headlines. But when nothing happens, when accidents don’t occur because of the diligence and leadership of a safety manager, lives are being saved and injuries are being prevented.

How You Can Save Lives

If you’re responsible for safety at your company, you can be a hero. No one may call you that, but you’ll know it.

That’s actually one of the key attributes of good safety managers—they genuinely care about the welfare of personnel. Although there are substantial financial reasons to promote safety, compassion is a major driver for them. The safety managers who create best-of-class safety programs and cultures have a very sincere desire to keep people from harm.

But another key characteristic of effective safety managers is that they realize that compassion isn’t enough. Simply wanting someone not to get hurt doesn’t prevent it from happening. Therefore, they take the following steps:

·         Advocate safety to management.  

If top leaders at the company don’t believe that safety is a top priority, then employees won’t believe it either. It takes management support—financially, as well as in words and deeds—to change a relatively apathetic and lax safety culture into a culture where safety is second-nature.

Many business leaders may be extremely compassionate, but faced with bottom-line pressures, they’re willing to let safety slip down the priority list. If you encounter this mindset, you can move to the financial justification for safety, which is inarguable but often overlooked. Even in the short-term, poor safety can be financially disastrous, and at the least counterproductive.

Point out the risks of lost work time, damaged/ruined equipment, liability exposure, increased workers comp premiums, increased group health plan premiums, etc., and you’ll have top management’s ear.

·         Convince personnel that safety benefits them.

Sometimes, being safe can just seem like more work.  But if management allows employees to spend the time to take appropriate safety measures, and if employees are rewarded for their safety, then this issue can be overcome. If being safe is seen as an essential part of the job—and not as just something extra that they can probably get away with half-doing or not doing at all—then they will be safer.

There’s also the common thought that “accidents happen to other people, not to me.”  You can counteract that thinking through safety awareness programs and education. No one wants to get hurt, so if you continually remind personnel of the danger that’s always present, they’ll begin to be safer out of their own self-interest.

·         Institute structured safety procedures.

Even if you get management and personnel to both take safety seriously, you still need policies and processes that ensure adequate safety measures are being taken. Well-defined, required safety procedures keep people from getting hurt.

These can’t simply be loose guidelines posted on a bulletin board. You should have actual safety processes that personnel must follow. For example, requiring personnel to always use The Checker’s pre-use inspection checklists will ensure that potentially dangerous defective equipment isn’t used.

You Don’t Need a Costume

Safety managers don’t have to dress in funny-looking tights to be a superhero who saves lives. They just have to be passionate about protecting the people they work with, focused on convincing people that safety is critical, and committed to implementing safety programs and tools that work.

Image courtesy of George Supreeth, Creative Commons.