Safety Culture Excellence®

In the wide, open spaces with nothing overhead but sky and an occasional bird, a worker gets out of his truck and is required to put on his hard hat.  There is a hundred yards between the gate and the factory door with no apparent dangers, but workers are required to put on all their PPE at the gate.  Production workers must wear steel-toed boots so the company decides to make fork truck drivers wear them also.  
What is the harm?  You can’t be TOO safe after all, can you?  The harm is in separating the rule from the risk.   

Overkill rules (rules that strive for TOO safe) run the risk of causing workers to lose their respect for safety rules in general.  If the rules don’t make sense, are they really about safety or just about authority?  If leaders exert power over workers in ways that don’t add value, workers can lose respect for leaders as well as their rules.  If safety rules don’t truly improve safety, they are not REALLY safety rules at all.

Overkill rules can also actually increase risks to workers.  Wearing a hard hat in the hot sun may offer no protection from overhead risks and actually increase the probability of sunstroke or heat exhaustion.  Wearing steel-toed boots can actually hamper fork truck operation in some instances.  Suiting up at the gate may make the walk to the factory door awkward and more risky.  

All safety rules should be periodically reviewed to ensure that they actually improve safety.  Knee-jerk reactions to accidents are often the source of overkill rules and organizations should adopt a process of careful analysis to make sure any new rule or guideline actually addresses the risk involved and does not create new risks. When the rules make sense and reduce risks they are more often obeyed.  The answer is “Yes, you can try to be TOO safe!”

-Terry L. Mathis

Terry L. Mathis is the founder and CEO of ProAct Safety, an international safety and performance excellence firm. He is known for his dynamic presentations in the fields of behavioral and cultural safety, leadership, and operational performance, and is a regular speaker at ASSE, NSC, and numerous company and industry conferences. EHS Today listed Terry as a Safety Guru in ‘The 50 People Who Most Influenced EHS in 2010, 2011 and 2012-2013. He has been a frequent contributor to industry magazines for over 15 years and is the coauthor of STEPS to Safety Culture Excellence, 2013, WILEY.