Picture yourself in the middle of a safety-related presentation when the company owner barges in interrupting your training and with loud and profane protestations pulls one of the participants out.  His explicit message to you and all in the room is simple – “we’re too busy for this …. (let your imagination fill in the blank) right now.  We’ll do this safety stuff when we have free time.”  

With these words, he walks out and leaves you to deal with the aftermath, which includes the following issues (this list is by far not exhaustive):

1. Clear communication of the attitude of total disregard for safety from the top management;
2. Personal humiliation;
3. Devaluation of your efforts, which effectively undermines your authority and any attempts to build a positive safety climate – the very things which you were hired to do in the first place.

 We could spend time here focusing on whether these types of things really still happen today or on why an organization would shoot itself in the foot by undermining the same safety program which is responsible for the majority of its new contracts, etc.  Instead of all this, however, we WILL FOCUS on figuring out the WAY FORWARD in hostile safety environment.  What are the best things you can do when you want to do the right thing but find yourself crippled by your surrounding circumstances?

 First, you do the right thing as a safety professional and document everything in the process.  I know I’m not revealing anything new or profound here, but sometimes we all need to be reminded of the simple basic steps.  Keep copies of written communication, follow up verbal communications with restatement emails, which allows them to be documented, etc.  Some battles are simply not worth fighting as long as you have documented your intent/recommendation to do the right thing.

Second, continue to communicate with the top management of your organization.  Seize the right moments and be prepared at all times to state your case accurately, concisely, and convincingly.  Sooner or later, you will get through and changes will come, even if ever so slightly.

 Third, do not forget the simple fact that there are two ways to bring about the organizational change: top down and bottom up.  So, irrespective of your success or failure with top management, educate and empower every employee, from the lowest levels, on the personal value of safety.  Help them see that safety is not one more program that they must follow, but a way of life that can help them achieve the goals that they have and keep them alive.  In promoting change from the bottom up, your job will be to motivate the employees to see safety as their moral obligation, the right choice.  You will need to use your powers of persuasion to help these men and women who just need to provide for their families see that bending safety rules to accommodate production may enable them to keep their jobs in the short run but could cost them their lives or freedom in the long haul.  They will need to understand that when one or two of them decide to buck the system in an organization that does not value safety, they may get fired.  But if safe work attitude gains sufficient momentum, change will take place because it is impractical to fire the entire workforce at once. 

 Will this catch on overnight?  It may, but in most cases, it will be a gradual process.  It will take some convincing and it will depend on the individual choices of every single employee.  The truth is it may even cost you your job, but in the end you will know that you did what you could to fulfill the mandate of your vocation, rather than just clocked in and out.