How to Spot Risk and Stay

Alive

A safety professional may read the title of this article and feel it’s
child’s play. How could somebody not know how to look for risk?
That same safety professional may even be tempted to use a
phrase that I cannot stand: common sense. I once heard a speaker
explain that common sense is a learned phenomenon. We cull the
experiences of our life and, from them, develop our so-called
common sense. This is very true. If I spent my entire career
reaching into a machine that wasn’t locked-out and nothing
happened to me, I may believe that doing so was safe. This is the
experience that develops my common sense.
Can You Rely on Common Sense?

That same scenario may seem like a lack of common sense to

somebody who knows better, but we’re assuming that I have no
other education or experience to help me come to a better
conclusion. Of course, this example is extreme; it would also
require that I had no experience or knowledge to let me know that
rollers, gears, or blades were dangerous. The point of the matter is
this: common sense is different for everybody, and therefore cannot
be relied upon.
It’s important for safety professionals to realize that what seems like
second-nature to us now, didn’t always. The fact that we can walk
onto a construction site or a manufacturing floor and immediately
begin pointing out unsafe conditions and practices stems from
years of education and experience. When I first began in the
industry, I could barely tell one piece of heavy equipment from
another, let alone start pointing out problems. It took time to
develop that particular skill set.

Walk a Mile in Their Shoes

To understand where a non-safety professional may be coming

from, we need to put ourselves back in their shoes. Maybe you
can’t remember what it was like before you knew safety so well, so
instead, think of a time more recently when you had to visit a new
facility or, worse yet, a new industry with which you were not used
to dealing. Sure, there are things that carry over from facility to
facility, from industry to industry, but most likely there were things
there you had yet to understand – new machines, new procedures,
new tasks. The first thing you needed to do was learn what those
machines, procedures and tasks were. You needed to find out
where the exposures were and how those exposures should be
controlled.

The Importance of Risk Assessment

Yes, that’s right, you did a Job Hazard Analysis (JHA) or whatever
preferred acronym you use for a risk assessment. Whether you
stopped and did this on paper or you ran through it in your head,
you went through a very methodical process. The problem is that
you went through this process because it is a part of your training
and background. Not so for your line employees, your laborers, or
even members of management. Their inherent focus may be, “How
do I properly operate this equipment?”, “What is the most efficient
way to operate this?” or even “This is a piece of cake, so I guess I
no longer need to pay attention,” not necessarily, “Where and why
is this dangerous?”

Don’t Fish for Them, Teach a Them to Fish

It is important to instruct your employees that assessing risk is an

important part of their job, not just something that is done for them .
Train them on the proper way to perform a JHA. This should include
running through some practice assessments and reviewing the
existing assessments for your facility. When you see workers on the
floor or jobsite, ask them what hazards are presented by their job
and what they – or the company - have done to reduce their
exposure. This is no time to be protective of your job and skills. You
want everybody thinking like you do when you walk into a work area
because you cannot be everywhere at once. If the employees can’t
tell you what hazards their job presents and what controls are in
place, then how can they possibly be aware if those controls or the
precautions that they are supposed to be taking are effective?
What’s Wrong with This Picture?

Do you remember - as a child - doing those “What’s wrong with this

picture?” puzzles? That’s how I approach every site or facility I
enter. Consider the original picture – your frame of reference – to
be the OSHA regulations, your company procedures, and your
general knowledge of what is safe or unsafe. This original picture is
how everything should be, in a perfect world. Next, you have the
altered picture – the one with things missing, backwards, changed,
whatever. This is reality. This is the facility or jobsite you’ve walked
into. Having the first page in hand makes it easy to spot the
problems, but what if you didn’t have that first page? What if you
hadn’t known exactly how it should be, or had only gotten a quick
glance? Now it becomes harder to see the problems. Our jobs must
include giving our supervisors and workforce that first page – that
frame of reference from which to work.
Do You Have the Right Picture?

To achieve this, they must understand the OSHA regulations that

apply to their work, but just citing them chapter and verse helps only
a little bit. They need to know how those regulations apply to what
they do and be able to use them to help identify hazards. This is
what the goal of a good OSHA 10 or 30 hour Outreach course should
be – hazard identification. If you’re sitting through a class with an
instructor that is just trying to cram as much of the CFR text down
your throat as he or she can do in 10 or 30 hours, then your
instructor has not been trained well and you have wasted your
money. A good course teaches you the regulations and how to
recognize if things are not right.
Now Do a Gut Check!

Finally, tell your people to trust their gut. No, common sense isn’t
always good, but if something feels wrong to someone, most likely
it is wrong, even if they’re not sure why. Tell them to take the time
to find out why they feel this way or to get somebody with more
experience or knowledge who can review it for them. In order for
this to be successful, your company must be receptive to workers
doing this. If every time a worker approaches a supervisor with a
concern they hear “Just get back to work,” they will quickly stop
trying to raise issues. Yet, if your company encourages this,
eventually those same employees will begin to know why they feel
something is wrong and, most likely, begin to be able to fix
problems themselves, where possible.
Experience, knowledge, and good training, with good coaching
along the way will help your employees get to a point where
spotting risks is child’s play. It won’t happen overnight, but every
day that passes is another day they’ve gotten better at it and
another day they’ve stayed alive.