Accountability. Are We Doing The Right Thing?
It is the driving force in EHS…. accountability. In developing a safety “culture”, establishing that everyone has a personal accountability for his or her safety is essential. Accountability of executives with decision making responsibility has been the requirement of regulators for years as executives that take safety short-cuts because of financial considerations have been prosecuted following fatal incidents. A case in Ohio has now highlighted the requirement for professional accountability as an EHS Manager was prosecuted and found guilty following a fatal incident where waste water treatment procedures were not followed. See http://dayton.bizjournals.com/dayton/stories/2010/06/14/daily22.html
While a brief report of the case does not tell the whole story and all of the facts of what happened, it does highlight the need to follow one of the basic safety rules of thumb, do the right thing. When in doubt, do the right thing. Sounds simple, but in the day-to-day activities of running or managing a business safety management system, we are often confronted with situations where resources, abilities and schedules clash with operational or financial expectations. Asking the question, “Are we doing the right thing?” before making a decision will provide an opportunity to evaluate the risk involved from a perspective that supersedes the day-to-day realities. The evaluation of risk from this high level perspective can prevent us from heading down a fatal path. Look at the recent fatal disasters in the news and ask yourself, if they had stopped and asked, “Are we doing the right thing?”, would have this disaster been prevented? Very frequently your reply to this question will be “Yes”.
We do not live in a perfect world. The out-dated safety concept of having a safe work procedure for every task and always following that procedure has been proven over and over again to not work…it works 99.9% of the time, but it is the 0.1% that leads to fatal mistakes. People are not perfect, we will make mistakes and not always perform up to our ability. Evaluating if a decision involves doing the right thing will usually serve you well during those situations that occur 0.1% outside the norm.
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