Safety Indicators A New View: 5 Leading Indicators for a New Level of Safety Performance
Excerpt ~ CHAPTER ONE: WHAT WHAT ARE WE LOOKING AT?
Look at life through the windshield, not the rear view mirror …Byrd Baggett
The rear view mirror certainly has its uses. Impacting tomorrow’s performance is not one of them. Granted, it is important to recognize and know where we have been. But to create momentum toward a step change in safety performance, we must focus on what we are doing, in the present, and measure it against what we should be doing now and in the future.
This book is your road map toward a step change in safety performance. When reading a map, it is important to know where you are and, possibly, even where you have been. But the main use of this map is to provide the path that leads to where you want to go. It’s a new place, a place your team has not had access to before – an unprecedented, unpredictable leap in safety performance.
To do that, we simply have to get people to start behaving in new ways. It’s that simple.
Simple is not easy.
(Kindle Location 44 - 57). Paula Schwartz. Kindle Edition.
I am sure from reading this excerpt you are getting a good idea of what this book is about. I really like the message of creating a road map, looking through the windshield of now and into the future and not into the past. This advice can be taken for any area of our life. I really appreciate this message.
From the book description:
This "New View" on what we monitor and track to ensure we are building and sustaining a mature safety culture does not focus on Safety Audits that look for paperwork or documentation. These 5 Leading Indicators are focused on the critical actions taken by frontline supervisors to influence their crews and instill behaviors that foster collaborations, teamwork, and true commitment to safety.
I am really grateful to the people who study safety and do what they can to protect the public from injury and death.
Again, wonderful that you changed your attitude about safety in your own day to day life and survived your accident in tact.
:) Seann
The author is right about details and paperwork. While these onerous functions uncover trends and provide data required to verify conditions and problems, they are not at the root of creating a safer environment--changing attitudes is.
While I have had many close call accidents in my life and some injury, my health is quite good from avoiding all the hazards in the workplace and lifestyles created by advertising and peer pressure like smoking, asbestos, lead based paints, drugs, etc. But I am not immune to attitude problems. For example, I resented the idea of seat belts and speed limits most of my life, and drove without my seatbelt until 1995, long after they were mandatory. Now, when I drive, I'm encased in a lap belt, an EZ-Lock holding my wheelchair firmly in place, a chest belt keeping me firmly upright, the van chest and lap belt mounted firmly to the floor, and a driver's-side airbag. When my brakes failed and I ran into the back of another vehicle, the airbag did not even touch me, and I suffered no injury or even pain from the considerable impact.
Ron