Has ‘zero’ become a dirty word in safety?
June 11, 2012 by Fred HosierPosted in: Analysis/Commentary, Injuries, Special Report
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Maybe you’ve worked at a company that adopted a safety phrase like this: Our goal is zero injuries! Now some in the world of safety say slogans like that are a bad thing, while others say anything less is unconscionable. Who’s right?
Here’s a seminar title that will get your attention: Zero Accidents was the Goal of the Titanic!
So when I was choosing my sessions for this year’s American Society of Safety Engineers’ Safety 2012 conference in Denver, I put that on my schedule.
The session leader, Corrie Pitzer with SAFEmap International, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, posed the question: Why do great companies have safety disasters? (At another ASSE conference session, discussion leaders said one reason is that the precursors to minor and major incidents are different, and that eliminating minor ones doesn’t necessarily eliminate major ones.)
Pitzer said there are 7 traps of what he calls “Near Zero Organizations ” (NZO). One of the traps is proclaiming that your safety vision is zero … zero injuries.
Zero is a false god, according to Pitzer.
Emotionally, no one wants one of their workers to get hurt or killed on the job. There’s really no other way to think about it.
But Pitzer said, think about what it would mean to have zero injuries. That would also mean you’d have zero incidents. Will that happen? To have zero incidents would also mean you’d have zero near misses. But near misses are important for learning, right? To have zero near misses, you’d also have to have zero mistakes. Are any of us perfect? To have zero mistakes, you’d probably have to have zero risks. Yet, don’t we also speak of reasonable risk in business?
On the other hand …
While speaking at the ASSE conference, OSHA administrator David Michaels mentioned a new book, The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. Michaels said, “You have to read the part about Alcoa and safety.”
So I bought the book.
First off, Habit is an interesting psychological read, both for personal and business goals. It lays out the science of how establishing habits is key to reaching goals.
The chapter Michaels refers to has to do with how, in 1987, the new Alcoa CEO Paul O’Neill decided to make safety the core of chance for the aluminum company.
At a meeting with prominent Wall Street investors and stock analysts, O’Neill made this statement right at the beginning of his speech: “I intend to make Alcoa the safety company in America. I intend to go for zero injuries.”
The investors thought O’Neill was nuts. This is what the new CEO leads with? This is his top priority? People left the meeting and advised their clients to sell their Alcoa stock — the new CEO was crazy.
But the rest is history.
Within a year of O’Neill’s speech, Alcoa’s profits hit a record high. And that happened because Alcoa did become one of the safety companies in the world.
Before O’Neill’s initiative, Alcoa plants had an average of one injury per week. Afterward, some would go years without having an injury.
O’Neill attacked one habit of workers and then watched the changes ripple through his organization. Quality got better. Production got better. Profits certainly got better.
“The habits that matter most are the ones that, when they start to shift, dislodge and remake other patterns,” author Duhigg writes in his book.
So who is right? Is “zero injuries” an unreasonable goal? Does it cause workers to hide injuries so that they aren’t the one to cause their group, assembly line, plant, etc. to miss its safety goal? Or is “zero injuries” really the only way to go when it comes to workplace safety? Do you use some form of the slogan?
As always, let us know what you think in the comments below.
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Tags: ASSE Safety 2012, Corrie Pitzer, David Michaels, The Power of Habit, zero injuries
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June 11th, 2012 at 11:30 am
I would like to read the comments submitted.
June 11th, 2012 at 3:04 pm
We have no safety slogan here. The biggest injuries here are the occasional paper cuts and minor solder burns. They are far and inbetween. They are reported for the most part and dealt with burn cream or band-aids from our first aid kits. We have PPE that the employees do wear when needed. Other than that they do their work the best they can without causing themselves or others injury. Also without nobody constantly getting on their case about safety.
I would hope there are no companies out there which do have safety slogans that hide injuries or put fear into employees so as to not have them report any. Wait, what am I posting? Of coarse there is.
June 12th, 2012 at 7:40 am
NOT HAVING “ZERO ACCIDENTS ” IS LIKE TRYING TO WIN A MILITARY VICTORY HALFWAY! YES,AT CPW WE DO HAVE “ZERO ACCIDENTS”AS A SLOGAN.THIS IS IMPORTANT TO OUR EMPLOYEES TO TRY TO REACH THAT GOAL. WE DO NOT ALWAYS GET THERE BUT OUR ACCIDENT RATE IS VERY LOW AND OUR COMPANY IS INVOLVED IN ALL UTILITIES INCUDING POWER,WATER,GAS,SEWER,A WATER PLANT AND A SEWER PLANT.
June 12th, 2012 at 8:24 am
I would prefer to avoid this contensious issue by focusing not on incidents but rather at-risk behaviors. Particularly for companies with very low incident rates, whether a low probability incident occurs or not is often not a reflectionon the safety program. By creating a culture where everyone is taking precautions to avoid at-risk actions, even the events leading to extremely low probability (e.g. 1x/career) injuries can be prevented.
June 12th, 2012 at 9:00 am
Bill, I have a feeling that your company slogan has nothing to do with your very low injury rate. The low rate has to with people working safely on their own regardless of the slogan. After all, who wants to get hurt.
June 12th, 2012 at 10:06 am
Zero Accidents or Safety First
These are just slogans it is the culture that has to be created to keep accidents and hopefully injuries at a minimum
It is the same thing for Pest Control a company is hired to eradicate pest problems but the reality is the pest population’s kept to where they are not visible or in critical areas. Pests have been with us since life began and in most cases they are tougher than we are. So Pest Control is same as for accidents you try to minimize the risks and behaviors that cause accidents. Unfortunately there is always something that can go wrong or someone careless a part that breaks etc.
You can minimize at risk behaviors by providing training and minimize exposures by issuing PPE But you must have ongoing Safety training and Audits humans tend to get careless unless constantly monitored in particular in this area.
June 12th, 2012 at 10:07 am
Safety is not black and white. That to say that the “Zero Injuries” slogan (at least to me as a SH&E coordinator) does not mean promoting fear, no near misses, incidents , lack of mistakes or no need for improvements .
We don’t advertise “zero injuries” in our plant -we don’t even want to talk about it!!! but, it is where we envision the bar to be. Let’s mitigate, let’s change the culture , let’s do whatever we can do and hope for the best -no one getting hurt.
June 12th, 2012 at 10:49 am
Our slogan is “Safety is no Accident”. By that, we mean your safety is not by accident, but rather by the employee’s deliberate attention to work safetly. We train, coach, and remind every employee that safety is a personal choice. It seems to work; as an industrial facility with 80 employees, we have gone over 4 years without a lost time accident.
I have a sign in my office which reads “Safety is Job 3″. As the company Safety Officer, I get a lot of funny reactions when people see the sign. But I can easily point out countless times people will do things just a little unsafe out of expediency. Grab a chair instead of getting a ladder, walk quickly past a hazard because they had forgotten their hard hat or safety glasses. We do it all the time, and at home as well. Acciddents are but a moment away; by ingoring the little ones you are inviting a big one. Make safety a habit you can live with.
June 12th, 2012 at 10:56 am
Sorry alicfinn, Not every company “must have ongoing safety training and audits” as you stated. Only the ones that choose to.
June 13th, 2012 at 10:28 am
If your goal isn’t zero what is your goal?
Even our Area OSHA office has taken on the goal of Zero, theirs is for fatalities for the entire area, but it is the same thing in philosophy.
If one of our Managers or Supervisors said that our goal was going to be to have less than 4 recordable injuries this year, our CEO would ask 4 of them to come up to the front of the room so he could smash their hand with a bat and get the 4 injuries out of the way so we could work the rest of the year without any injuries.
Zero is more of a mindset then it is a goal. If people don’t truly believe we can work without being injured, then they need to work somewhere else.
June 13th, 2012 at 10:33 am
Slogans are good, they give you a rally point. Zero accidents, Zero lost time accidents, Zero near misses, are only slogans, unless the worker buy into the program, a slogan has never stopped a person from falling. It takes the efforts of the workers to make a program work.
The biggest problem I see is that work is given out based on incident, lost time, or DART ratios that are all based on accidents and there is no way to cross check them, so one company can pad there ratio and get work and the company who does not is at a disadvantage. Companies safety programs should be judged by some other criterion.
June 14th, 2012 at 6:54 pm
I worked with a company that used “Target Zero”. This slogan doesnt imply that there will be no accidents but it DOES enforce a “goal”. Any slogan has to be backed with an effective safety management program. We actually worked 6 million mans hours over the course of several years without a single lost time injury . Yes there were a few minor recordables (cuts, strains, sprains). Everybody went home the same way they came to work. This was a large demolition, Hazmat clean-up, and steel erection project. A great accomplishment, to say the least. Im a believer in “Target Zero” utilizing the Integrated Safety Management System (ISMS).