Real words, on real safety posters, in real companies. But are they genuine?
"Safety is Priority 1!"
"Nothing we do is worth taking a risk."
"Safety is our business."
"Our goal is a zero-accident workplace."
Lip service if different than actual behavior does more harm than good because it sends a mixed message. If an organization has a culture that implicitly or explicitly rewards short-term productivity, what happens to safety numbers? Do they go up or down? And why is that?
The tempting conclusion is that safety is in tension with productivity. There is a fundamental trade-off between these two measures of success. Right? Well, not quite.
High Reliability Organizations
Let’s talk about HROs. If you already know that is an acronym for High Reliability Organizations and are tired of hearing about how great HROs are in the same way you’re tired of hearing about how great it is to be attractive, wealthy, and physically fit, hang on a minute. Before you roll your eyes and stop reading, consider this: I am not writing about how great it is to be an HRO, I am writing about what it takes to get there.
HROs are commonly discussed but widely misunderstood. The bottom line is they achieve high performance and astonishingly low accident rates in the face of very high risk.
To download this entire article, click here. To read a related article on high reliability, click here.
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