“I sleep well because I know I’ve done everything I can to keep people safe.”
This is a quote from a high level HSE Executive. He said so even though he experienced many accidents and costly service quality issues due to a lack of mental focus in his organisation; but he felt like they were out of his hands. You’re never responsible for your employees actions or for the amount of management buy-in, but why not gain access to easily accessible knowledge and templates to improve already existing policies and procedures? Why not improve your own night sleep and send more people home safely, when this CAN in fact be done?
In the modern world with all its great technology, fast pace, and many distractions, it is crucial to train our organisations on the ability to be more focused; and it is key to make sure that this knowledge is distributed to the organisation’s employees as well. This is important both for planning and carrying out any kind of task, but it is especially important for tasks where people could potentially get hurt or harmed.
First and foremost, if we don’t start respecting our own valuable knowledge and the way we use it, we might soon not have a job anymore. Quoting the CEO of Nokia after the company went from being the world’s number one mobile phone supplier to not really being on the market anymore:
“We didn’t do anything wrong, but somehow we lost”
Why not do something about the problem we’re facing and develop as the modern times demand of us? I don’t want you to simply give up and be like the CEO of Nokia. I want you to qualify yourself and to take action for yourself; and luckily most HSE professionals want to do so!
At the moment toolbox talks and the hierarchy of control is a natural part of your everyday work. But to be a high performance HSE professional, you also need to have a strategy for building and maintaining the right type of focus in your organisation to make sure everyone is in control of their day/week/month. This doesn’t have to be difficult or complicated. You simply need to have an easy to understand implementation strategy - to make it easier for yourself and the people around you - and to know how to deliver training to secure the best results. This involves teaching people how to control their impulse control to prevent incidents and costly service quality issues, how to use their selective attention when planning something potentially dangerous, and how to ensure that they maintain the right level of interest for the task at hand.
If you truly want to sleep well at night you can’t be satisfied with where we currently are safety wise. There will ALWAYS be room for improvement. The important thing is to keep on developing!
