Getting workplace safety right

The management of employee safety is hardly a new concept. Yet, in manufacturing, many companies are missing out on the cost efficiencies and synergistic boost to productivity that would come from investing in safety systems and capabilities. The sense that rules needed to be broken and that safety is at odds with productivity was evident in the majority of the workplaces researched by this articleu0027s authors. Tweaking processes to get results inevitably ends up harming workers and the company. Companies that treat safety and productivity as separate entities force workers to navigate two competing sets of priorities. A plant manager with a bad safety record does not get promoted regardless of how efficient his team is. Operational managers (including line supervisors) are ultimately accountable for safety. Likewise, theyre responsible for communicating to workers that safety is a key priority. Companies with a culture of safe production create and follow formal processes for how work is done. At the most successful companies we have studied, management has fully integrated safety into their operational systems.