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Introduction Effective leadership skills are essential for strong safety performance and culture; they are even more crucial in the current environment of uncertainty, uneven morale and reduced resources— and organizations recognize this need. You don't have to look far to see numerous tomes, articles and seminars aiming at transferring the attributes of basic leadership, usually citing the import of continuous improvement; ironically, while many have good intent, information and case examples, focus is often on, "Here are the skills, now you've got it," which can run contrary to a process of continual development. In our view, "leadership" means getting desired results by working with and through others. It means generating exponential results over time from considered, much smaller, daily actions. In our experiences—Anil's in several executive positions (currently as CEO of the what is recognized as the safest and most environmentally sensitive oil tanker company in the world) and Robert's as head of a consulting company with worldwide clients such as BP, United Airlines, Honda, Avon, Boeing, DuPont, Harley-Davidson, Johnson & Johnson, Michelin, Textron, Xerox, U.S. Steel, and many more—we have seen examples of levels of leadership, from less effective to extremely so. Not surprisingly, higher levels of leadership are directly correlated with higher levels of safety performance and culture, in a wide array of leading and trailing measures. We recognize that leadership mindsets, toolsets and skill sets can vary from person and culture. Ultimately, leadership is less taught than learned, and that there is a wealth of leadership skills and attributes that we know about that could fill numerous books, much less this short paper (and that we know we certainly don't have all the answers). But, in this short space, we wish to offer core skills and attributes to further levels of safety leadership in companies worldwide, to suggest possibilities of significant improvements on multiple levels and to break through the ceiling of what many think of as "just" safety leadership.
- Energy > Oil & Gas (0.69)
- Transportation > Marine (0.55)
- Transportation > Freight & Logistics Services > Shipping > Tanker (0.55)
Many companies introduce new tools, procedures, training that may elicit good results. But this doesn't always work out to the satisfaction of organizations. Many times safety leaders reflect frustration that their companies have either squandered resources in ill-advised interventions or that they have not realized the full potential benefits of actions taken and programs implemented. Or, as one corporate safety director said, "I can't help but feel we're leaving money on the table." Currently, many organizations operate in a resource-tight environment. There is often an underlying sense of uncertainty for numerous companies and professionals, where the biggest thing they can count on is that resources are contracting—budgets slashed, time allowed cut, staff riffed, and travel and other expenses reduced. Many report they are working harder just to keep performance above water, to barely hang on. In this kind of milieu, strategic leadership is critical for maximizing gains from new interventions and being able to maintain positive forward safety momentum. Of course, even after separating the wheat from the chaff, there are numerous leadership ideas and philosophies that might be of help in current conditions. But attempting to implement many approaches can be jarring, overwhelming or counterproductive. Some may even neutralize others out, further contributing to wasting time and resources, missing potentially here-today-gone-tomorrow opportunities, losing credibility—and possibly endangering career development.
- Energy > Oil & Gas (1.00)
- Health & Medicine (0.74)
- Transportation (0.71)
Many managers and safety professionals bemoan the dearth of "personal responsibility" and seek to imbue their workers and culture with an ethic of all workers watching out for themselves. But regrettably traditional approaches to building personal responsibility have not shown themselves to be "tried and true." You'll note that in the title of my presentation and proceedings paper, "Personal Responsibility" is in quotation marks. This is because this term can indeed be loaded. Often, in fact, calls or pressures for self-control are ignored and can even backfire, resulting in pushback to the degree that some organizational members actually go out of their ways to "show them who's the boss," "not be pushed around," or similar resistant reactions and then actions. Further, admonitions for "personal responsibility" are often in reality code for, "You're responsible, I'm not." I recall one incident many years ago where I was approached by a plant of a Fortune 500 manufacturing company that was beset with "accident repeaters" (a relatively few workers who were having a disproportionate number of accidents, sometimes of the same type, sometimes different ones), requesting me to craft an intervention that would reduce this repetition. The underlying assumption I heard – and have subsequently identified in many such situations with numerous other companies – is that accidents, especially repeated ones, are predominantly or totally due to faults or lacks inherent in the person who experienced these accidents, that these workers have personal problems that result in their becoming injured. These personal problems might stem from a lack of concern for their own safety, inability to direct their own attention (because they are easily distracted), are emotionally out of control to the degree that anger or discontent somehow causes them to engage in more at-risk actions, they carry over personal problems from home (they are unable to "leave their work at work and their home at home"), they are disconnected from co-workers and from the company, they are specifically motivated to undercut the company's safety mission and record, and so on.
Introduction This study will be part of an ongoing research project designed to compare and assess the different strategies used by accredited Occupational Safety and Health undergraduate programs to measure learner outcomes. This project will limit itself to institutions that have proven quality control by maintaining accreditation from the Applied Science Accreditation Commission (ASAC) of the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET). The American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) approved accreditation status to the undergraduate Occupational Safety and Hygiene Management program at Millersville University (MU) in 1991. ASSE transferred accreditation to ABET in 1993. As one of the first ABET-accredited Bachelor of Science occupational safety programs in the country, the program flourished. In 2001, ABET accreditation status at MU was upgraded with the addition of environmental coursework, changing the program title to Occupational Safety and Environmental Health (OSEH). Every six years, the OSEH program is audited by ABET for re-accreditation. "Continuous effort must be expended to maintain accreditation" (Boraiko, 2010). The Millersville University Occupational Safety and Environmental Health (OSEH) ABET reaccreditation process examines learning outcome objectives, and specifically, whether any learning outcome objectives are undergoing measurement and evaluation for continuous program improvements. Using an assessment of learner outcomes "is an integral component to ensure that quality learning is occurring" (Hill, 2012). The last piece, known as ‘Closing the Loop,’ is often remiss in the assessment process. Doing the assessment should result in changes towards continuous improvement.
The Institution of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) was founded in 1945, shortly after the end of World War 2, as a part of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (RoSPA). Initially it was an organisation for industrially based persons who had an interest in the health and safety of the workforce and in its first incarnation was known as the Institution of Industrial Safety Officers (IISO). The founding fathers of the organisation were a diverse group of people many with engineering or military backgrounds, all with a desire to improve the conditions of the workforce and to reduce the number of accidents occurring within the manufacturing and construction industries within the UK. The first of the branches in the UK was based in the heavily industrialised West Midlands of England but soon spread to other areas of the country. IISO changed its name to IOSH in 1980 to reflect the broader nature of safety and health practice. A similar organisation arose from within the local authorities in the UK. This was known as the Institution of Municipal Safety Officers (IMSO). The two bodies, IOSH and IMSO, amalgamated in 1982 forming the premier safety and health orientated organisation in the UK. Much of the demand for qualified health and safety practitioners came about as a result of the changes to the UK legislative framework that had occurred in 1974. A report had been commissioned by the government regarding the regulation of health and safety in the workplace, and a committee chaired by Lord Robens undertook this work. The Robens report recommended a change in the approach to how health and safety was dealt with in the workplace by using a goal setting approach rather than the existing prescriptive legislation. The Robens Report was the basis of the UK's Health and Safety at Work Etc Act, 1974 which became statute law on 1 January 1975. Workplaces now needed practitioners who were able to interpret and recommend good practice rather than be 'policemen' of prescribed standards as previously. This required changes in the way health and safety practitioners needed to be trained and their competence assessed, and to the development of some national standards of health and safety practice. At the time what both IOSH and IMSO had in common was a great deal of enthusiasm for health and safety issues but no laid down standards of practice for those people who held the position of Safety Officer within companies and organisations. Both the two independent bodies and later the combined IOSH addressed this lack by developing qualifications that would lead to named levels of membership of the Institution. Qualifications in health and safety were devised to bring some order, recognition and regulation to those individuals undertaking the generalist health and safety practitioners' role. These qualifications were eventually taken over by the National Examining Board in Occupational Safety and Health (NEBOSH), which was founded, as part of IOSH in 1979, eventually becoming fully independent in 1992.