Chances are, if you work at a small- or medium-size facility, you’re a one-person safety department. You know, realistically, you need other supervisors to help drive home the safety message. So why don’t safety managers delegate more?
While reading my colleague Lisa McKale’s post, The 4 dumbest excuses for why we don’t delegate more on ResourcefulManager.com, it occurred to me that many safety managers don’t have a staff they can delegate to.
Sure, you might have a safety committee. But the employees on the committee aren’t entirely devoted to safety like you are. They have full-time roles at your company.
But there’s another group that needs to take on a lot of safety responsibility and be your eyes and ears: supervisors.
With the right type of safety encouragement from upper management, you can get support for deputizing supervisors to help out with safety.
In Lisa’s post, the No. 1 reason why managers don’t delegate more is “I got this all by myself.”
Lisa notes this is possible some of the time, but it’s impossible all of the time.
And the advice on how to counter this inclination is perfect for the safety world: Think about the duties you know you must do yourself and separate the things you don’t.
Also: Make it a team effort. The safety team isn’t restricted to just those on the safety committee. Supervisors need to be a key part of the safety effort.
To see the other three reasons managers don’t delegate more often – and get some advice on how to counter that inclination – read Lisa’s post here.
