Safety Awakening – “Brothers In Safety Help Each Other”

March 7, 2018 No Comments

“Brothers In Safety Help Each Other”

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A few years ago I was the safety manager for a large, multi-location company.  We had numerous “internal” measures of our safety performance and we did a very good job in comparing our recent safety performance to our historical results.  However, we could not find any good data on how our competitors were performing on these key safety metrics.

One day I took the bold step of calling my counter parts at our main competitors.  I asked if they’d be willing to share their safety and accident metrics with me.  To my surprise, most of them said they would, provided I would only use the data for internal purposes.  I agreed, and for the rest of my tenure at that company, we were able to benchmark our safety and accident performance to not only our own historical performance, but also to our competitors’ results.

I’ve found that when it comes to safety, there are no competitors.  We are all “brothers”.   Cooperating when it comes to employee safety benefits everyone in your business sector.  It both gives the overall industry a good name, and it also keeps the governmental safety regulators at bay.  In addition to sharing accident metrics, other things you might want to share with your competition include:

• new safety products that work well for you
• improved safety practices
• copies of written safety polices and programs
• safety success stories
• industry specific accidents (with the employees’ names redacted)
• results of governmental safety inspections (available on the Internet anyway) 

 

Awakenings