Organizations with low numbers of on-the-job injuries can be proud of their record.
But number of injuries alone doesn’t tell the whole story.
Safety expert Don Groover, writing in Safety and Health Magazine, points out that, in dangerous situations, luck plays a part.
Groover gives this example: An observer stands below a worker on a high platform. The worker is using a hammer. The hammer falls and misses the observer. There are zero injuries on the job that day but, the fact is, the observer was lucky, not safe. The exposure to danger was still there.
The key is creating a work environment and a safety culture that recognizes exposure, not just injury.
In that example, you could say that the workers were in error, either because of the way the hammer was used or because of the position of the observer. While that might be true, Groover points out that the pool of exposure points is more important.
“A focus on exposures is a radical departure from a focus on hazards or unsafe actions,” Groover writes.
The key is focusing on the factors that cause vulnerability to dangerous situations before the injuries occur or, with luck, don’t occur.
“When a person is exposed, the outcome is out of their control,” Groover says. They could have good luck — or bad.
The significance of safety exposures becomes clearer when seen over time.
Groover gives the example of a worker who climbs on a unit to install a strap on a shipping container. When he steps back, he stumbles and falls five feet. He is uninjured.
He is lucky, and the company has zero injuries but their exposure, when considered across the system, is huge: An employee climbs up twice for each unit loaded. About 25,000 units are loaded per day, equaling 50,000 exposures per day or 18 million exposures per year.
Given this immense number of possible falls, relying on perfect execution each time from employees reveals a much bigger risk than merely calculating injuries per day.
