When you come home from a long day at work, the last thing that you want to find is your house in shambles. All pet owners can understand this feeling, right? Couches are ripped up; chairs broken or dug out of their sockets with sharp teeth marks everywhere like some kind of weird murder scene from an old B-grade horror movie…and there’s even rolls of toilet paper on the ground!
That’s why you will see some of our furry friends hide away and observe your behaviour, while others try to win over a guilty conscience with their deep eyes full of unconditional love.
And before you know it, you are now dealing with a whole bag of mixed emotions where the balance is all tilted towards “Oh…whatever…” and so you smile, pat them a bit… tell them they are a naughty boy or girl… and then what do you do? You go and you clean up that mess like the compliant pet-owner that you are!
And here’s the thing. In all of that there is ONE thought pet owners can never escape – “I am wondering how exactly it happened.” They want to know every step by process as to why their beautiful home turned into a post-apocalyptic landscape.
And this is why camera systems were invented!
To provide us the necessary evidence to see exactly what happened. If one picture is better than a thousand words, then how awesome is a camera system that tells you when your house is being ransacked?
Now, you may or may not realise, but as part of your cleaning-up after your pet’s adventures, you are also conducting an incident investigation and you are putting controls in place to prevent the incidents from happening again, or to at least minimise the impacts, so that the end result is not as catastrophic.
Quickly you start to apply the lessons learnt to other areas in your home. Some common corrective and preventive measures include: Locking cabinets, tying together door handles, covering furniture, removing fragile decorations, relocating vulnerable plants, training your pets and more.
But just how different do you really think any of these scenarios are to how we operate in the workplace? How do you see people around you behave after an incident? What culture do you grow daily and nurture in your workplace in regard to communication for incidents?
You see, when a company’s culture is one of blaming, shaming and finger pointing- your staff will naturally feel scared and withdrawn and will hide away instead of reporting incidents and telling you the whole story.
This can be because they are scared to lose their job or to be seen as a trouble maker. If you have a “0 Injury” culture that is not supported by any means of help, training and proper maintenance of equipment – people may also avoid communicating any incidents, because they do not want to be the ones who broke your perfect FAIFRs, MTIFRs, LTIFRs etc.
Your path to success can only happen by adopting a culture of transparency and open communication where you drive down the only healthy and safe approach – “Safety Comes FIRST” – It comes before delivery deadlines, it comes before KPIs, It comes before statistics… it simply comes first!
And when you have this approach, you will naturally ensure that you also provide the resources and infrastructure to support it, whether its training, supervision, tools, auditing and an easy to use reporting and investigation system. You will have a PROACTIVE and not a reactive approach. You will want to identify your risks and opportunities to advance – and you won’t be living in worry or concern that something will go wrong because you have left known issues unattended…
Identifying the root cause of an incident helps you eliminate their occurrence and reduce any similar scenarios in the future. Investigation also helps identify any gaps or weaknesses, which can then be addressed with stronger controls put into place to prevent further problems from happening.
A timely and accurate reporting, a clear communication of any incidents, and a participation of your staff in investigations is crucial to the success of your safety management system. Hazard identification requires the awareness of your staff – and requires their understanding of the importance of early reporting and early intervention.
Risk assessments require you to consult your staff, observe how their work is performed and agree on controls that will be most effective and reasonably practicable, safe and strong.
We all have our own realities, both in the workplace and at home, and we had a bit of a laugh thinking about our cute fluffy friends, but let’s get to business! It’s time to make things simple! It’s time to move the needle to a safety focused culture – do you agree? If you do, then you are one step closer to walking home before the accident occurs!
Did someone say KIM?
KIM is a business solution that allows you to excel in risk management, internal audits, Quality Objectives, Workplace Communication, and much much more. It is a human resources management software that is also a time and attendance software, an equipment management software, fleet management software, contractor management software and Business Management Software that has all the tools your business will ever need!
Speak to our team today to see how we can implement safety management into your company.
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