Top 10 prominent issues in safety management: Does your organization face any of them?

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1. How to evaluate the safety management level of an organization? The traditional view is that to assess the level of safety management in an organization, one should primarily look at its safety performance. For example, have there been any work-related deaths? Have there been any major accidents related to production, equipment, or fires? What is the injury rate per thousand workers? In reality, it’s not the case. Temporary safety performance cannot reflect a unit’s overall safety management level. To evaluate the level of safety management in a unit, it is necessary to consider the following three aspects: First, what are the quantitative indicators for that unit’s safety management? The presence of such indicators reflects the degree of detail in the management practices of that unit. Second, what are the patterns of employees’ behavior? Without an understanding of employees’ behaviors and any changes in them, it is impossible to effectively control human behavior, and thus safety performance cannot be ensured. Third, what is the level of employee participation? It is only when more and more employees actively participate that true improvement in a company’s safety management can occur. 2. As the plant manager, how much time do you spend on safety management? Safety management is a responsibility of the top management. In enterprises, whether it’s frontline managers, middle-level managers, or senior managers, when it comes to safe production, no one says it isn’t important, and no one claims to not pay attention to it. So, as an important position within the corporate management hierarchy—the plant manager—what does this person do in their daily work? When we ask, \"As the head of a plant, how much time do you spend on safety management each month?\", few people are able to answer. Why does this happen? Is it an isolated phenomenon or a common one? As people often say, “Safety management is important in theory, less so in practice, and completely ignored when things get busy.” Why does this happen? Do they really not pay attention to safety measures? Are they deliberately saying one thing while doing another? Neither is the case. As plant managers, their daily management tasks are indeed very busy. If factory managers consider safety management to be something \"important but not urgent,\" and if we lack clear requirements and effective methods regarding how personnel at all levels should participate in safety management, then the phenomenon of giving it low priority when there’s time and ignoring it when things get busy becomes inevitable. 3. All employees must be involved in safety management. What specific actions need to be taken on a daily basis? The previous question addressed how the factory manager can contribute to safety management. So, what about other positions? In a company, safety management requires the involvement of everyone, from employees to the general manager. We have been advocating this concept for many years; so, how should people at all levels and in all categories participate? What specific actions should be taken in daily operations? Surveys show that although many companies emphasize the need for everyone’s involvement in safety management, there are few practical methods available at the operational level. This is actually a common problem existing in current enterprise security management. 4. What is the relationship between management and employees, as well as between superiors and subordinates in the company? What are the reasons for this? At present, these relationships in the company are much worse than before and are on a downward trend. Employees have many complaints and show significant resistance; there is a lack of proper trust between superiors and subordinates. Obvious signs include: first, a high employee turnover rate; in most companies, this rate ranges from 5% to 15%, with some cases reaching around 25%. Second, employees have low morale and cope passively; third, they are full of complaints and have a negative attitude. It is hard to imagine how a workforce filled with negativity and laziness can win battles, let alone ensure safe production. The deterioration of relations between workers and management, as well as disharmony in hierarchical relationships, have many underlying causes. Such as: excessive income disparities, unfair distribution, bureaucracy, a rough and crude working style, lack of concern for employees, job **and so on. Among them, poor working practices such as using penalties in place of proper management, poor communication, and administrative orders are the most direct causes. 5. Why are employees reluctant to use their brains? Why are they unwilling to actively participate in safety activities? Among various corporate management activities, safety management differs from other forms of management such as production management, cost management, and quality management in three key ways: first, “with safety, there is no turning back.” Once an injury accident occurs, it cannot be undone or repeated; secondly, “safety is the norm.” When people are fully engaged in demanding work, they often take safety for granted, ignore the presence of dangers, and as a result become careless; thirdly, it’s the principle that \"1000-1=0\". The chain principle tells us that the failure of any link in a chain will cause the entire chain to break. Safety management requires every employee in the enterprise to get involved. Regrettably, in reality, employees are not very enthusiastic about participating in safety management. Employees dislike participating in safety activities after work; they adopt a negative attitude, resist participation, and merely go through the motions, thinking, “I hope this activity ends soon so I can go home and rest!” Without the active involvement of employees, it is impossible to ensure long-term safety in the workplace. “Why are employees reluctant to use their brains? Why are they unwilling to actively participate in safety activities? How can we encourage employees to take an active role in such activities? These are all important issues that need to be studied and resolved. 6. Can fines reduce violations of rules and regulations? *What are the reasons for habitual violations? “Using fines instead of proper management” is a common problem in corporate management. This phenomenon is particularly prominent in security management. “Those who are late or leave early will be fined 50 yuan per incident; those who read books or newspapers during working hours will be fined 100 yuan per incident; those who violate rules and regulations will also be fined 100 yuan per incident... In order to strengthen \"management,\" fines are increased continuously, and superiors set penalty targets for their subordinates. Managers and safety officers who fail to meet the monthly penalty targets have 50% of their monthly bonuses deducted, among other penalties. Nevertheless, violations and rule breaches did not decrease as a result; instead, there were many instances of deliberate covert retaliation, such as the tires of safety officers’ bicycles being crushed and the cars of workshop supervisors being scratched. Why don’t fines help to reduce violations of rules and regulations? What negative effects do they have? 1) Fines undermine the relationship between superiors and subordinates as well as the trust that exists between them, causing subordinates to harbor resentment while being too afraid to speak out; 2) People only behave properly in front of their leaders ； When leaders are absent, retaliatory behaviors emerge; 3) it leads to mutual complaints and distrust among team members at the grassroots level, and managers find themselves in an awkward situation of facing pressure from both sides due to the penalty targets; 4) it deprives grassroots organizations of their vitality, causing a loss of sense of achievement and initiative; 5) employees are afraid of being punished and thus conceal the truth about problems, which over time fosters an organizational culture characterized by deception, dishonesty, and lack of trust; 6) it generates resistance, prompting people to try to make things even elsewhere. Obviously, such an organizational culture is a negative one. People’s mindsets become distorted, the truth is concealed, and workplace safety cannot be ensured. Fines are a crude and ineffective form of management with significant negative effects; they should not be used extensively or routinely in safety management. It has been proven that there are various reasons why employees’ violations of rules and regulations, as well as habitual violations, fail to be eradicated. In addition to intentional violations by employees, there are also reasons such as unconscious or inadvertent actions, bad habits, and insufficient training. Moreover, whether the rules and regulations themselves are scientific, reasonable, and feasible is another important factor that needs to be improved. 7. Are the rules and regulations scientific, reasonable, and feasible? Who was involved in their revision? To address the issue of employees’ *inherent violation of rules, 90% of companies focus their efforts on the employees themselves. Few people study the rationality and enforceability of the systems and procedures themselves. This is also a key reason why the problem of “*inherent violations” persists despite repeated attempts to address it. Our current operating standards and rules are always outdated and have room for improvement; this requires those in charge to not only carry out their tasks but also think about ways to refine them. Once the considerations are finalized, revise the current operating standards in accordance with the prescribed procedures. Companies promptly reward those who contribute to improving work standards. One can imagine a scenario like this: ① Employees carefully follow the existing operating standards → ② They meticulously identify the problems present → ③ They thoughtfully propose their own improvement solutions → ④ They submit the requests for changes through the prescribed procedures → ⑤ Supervisors reward those who participated in the revisions → ⑥ The cycle from ① to ⑤ repeats again. Just imagine: in such a scenario, would there still be so many instances of “habitual violations”? Involving employees in the revision of rules and regulations, and rewarding them in a timely manner, is an effective measure to eradicate the phenomenon of “habitual violations”. 8. What is the basis for evaluating a company’s safety performance? In businesses, a question that often plagues senior leaders and safety managers is why the company’s safety performance keeps experiencing periodic fluctuations. We can examine some aspects of how businesses are managed in order to try to identify the root causes of this issue. Think about it: what is the fundamental basis used for evaluating safety performance in your company? Is it a \"result-oriented\" approach – evaluation based on outcomes – or a \"process-oriented\" approach – evaluation based on processes? Performance evaluation is an important tool in business management, and safety performance is a key indicator within a company’s performance evaluation system. As the saying goes, \"Employees do what their leaders assess them on.\" Currently, results-based evaluation is a common approach in corporate performance management. This approach may be suitable for evaluating indicators such as production volume, costs, and quality, but it may not be appropriate for assessing safety management. We often hear business leaders asking, \"With increasingly stringent safety inspections, why do accidents still occur frequently?\" Traditional safety management approaches and thinking have been trying to find solutions, but with little success. This is precisely one of the important issues that lean safety management needs to focus on researching and solving. Traditional safety management approaches to evaluating safety performance are often result-oriented: for example, \"No work-related accidents throughout the year shall occur, and a generous reward will be given…\", \"If an accident resulting in minor injuries or worse occurs, 100% of all employees’ bonuses for that month will be withheld\", \"If a safety hazard is identified on site, a certain amount will be deducted from the company’s bonuses for that month…\" and so on. These measures of heavy rewards and severe penalties have played a positive role in raising safety awareness and encouraging leaders to pay attention to safety efforts. The results-based evaluation method, although simple and straightforward to implement, has many drawbacks. One of the drawbacks: these safety assessment indicators are broken down into hierarchical levels, following a reward system based on measurement results. This unified reward system ignores the individuality of different units. Second drawback: Just as those organizations that have put a lot of effort into safety management and those that have not done much in this area both receive their due bonuses by the end of the year, as long as no accidents occur. Third flaw: It ignores the essence and principles of safety management—employee behavior improvement and process control. Without continuous improvement in employees’ safe behaviors, safety performance becomes baseless. Evaluating a company’s security performance is a highly complex task that cannot be limited to a simple \"result-based\" approach. While focusing on outcomes, emphasis is placed on “process-based” assessment. For example, add process indicators for safe operation such as \"employee participation rate,\" \"percentage of safe behaviors,\" and \"compliance rate with ten-thousand-point controls,\" so that safety performance evaluations are based on continuous performance improvement. 9. How well is the occupational safety and health system implemented on-site? Why? The vast majority of enterprises have established and put into operation an occupational safety and health system; such system management is a significant indicator of modern safety management. The objective fact is that the establishment of such systems has brought about significant improvements and changes in corporate safety management, with these changes primarily manifesting at the levels of the company’s \"policies and objectives\" as well as its \"management procedures\". However, on the ground, at the level of \"operational procedures,\" the work documents are mostly \"reformatted\" to match the system’s structure; the system does not bring about any substantial changes to the actual operations carried out by employees. In other words, the implementation of most enterprise systems is not handled very well. The reasons are as follows: first, the cultural differences between the East and the West are so great that it is extremely difficult for employees to change their existing habits in order to adapt to Western cultural values; second, there is not enough time to establish such systems; third, the purpose of establishing these systems was not to change employees’ operational habits. The enterprise’s management system has now evolved to the \"integration of the three standards.\" As usual, management reviews are conducted, and a group of fixed, well-trained personnel skillfully handle the audits by the review panels. There has still been no substantial change in employees’ on-site behaviors. Common problems in enterprise safety management include “failure to implement the system”, “inadequate management”, and “lack of continuity in activities”. 10. Is safety management something that only involves costs with no returns? Can safety management generate economic benefits? There are many misconceptions regarding safety management in society; some people believe that implementing safety management in a company is a costly practice that yields no benefits at all. Some bosses are unwilling to invest in safety or implement safety management, believing that it does not generate economic benefits for the company. 　　However, human life and health are priceless; once lost, they can never be regained. Therefore, we say, “It’s safe; there’s no turning back.” In today’s contemporary society, the one-child generation is gradually becoming the main force in the labor force. In the enterprise, one person alone bears the happiness of 7 families. Therefore, today’s workforce is a generation that “can’t afford to get hurt” and even “can’t afford to perish”. Perhaps for this very reason, those so-called “economic benefits issues” seem insignificant compared to matters related to human life and health. 　　In terms of corporate safety management, if proper oversight is lacking, the consequences not only harm the health and lives of employees but also result in significant financial losses for the company. What are the direct losses caused by the accident? What are the indirect losses resulting from the impact of the accident? Managers and safety officers should calculate these costs accurately. 　　On the other hand, by strengthening safety management, enterprises can not only reduce losses caused by accidents, but also reap additional economic benefits resulting from such safety management activities. These economic benefits primarily stem from: ① improved production efficiency; ② better quality indicators; ③ reduced costs; ④ higher equipment operating rates; ⑤ an improved environment; ⑥ less waste on-site; and ⑦ increased on-site vitality due to heightened employee morale. In short, what managers and safety officers need to calculate carefully is the value generated by improvements in safety management. In general, companies should keep track of three aspects related to safety management: ① Accident costs = Direct losses + Indirect losses (Direct losses include expenses such as treatment costs, medical bills, nursing fees, hospitalization costs, compensation payments, additional costs related to hiring new employees, and other related expenses; Indirect losses include downtime costs, costs associated with restoring production, and other related expenses). ② Additional revenue from improved management = Direct benefits (Direct benefits include quantifiable gains resulting from quality improvements, cost reductions, increased production efficiency, and reduced equipment failures due to safety management efforts). ③ Overall safety benefits = ② – ① – Safety costs + Reputational value (Safety costs refer to the funds invested in safety management activities, including various safety bonuses, funds for addressing potential hazards, costs related to accident drills, and expenses for accident prevention; Reputational value refers to the portion of a company’s brand value that is attributed to its safety record, as assessed by professional evaluation agencies).