Company Safety Starts at the Top

Many of the discoveries and things we use today began as dangerous experiments that resulted in failures often accompanied with massive public denouncement and scrutiny, and then eventually in success. The airline industry, for example, always strives for safety in all aspects of its operations. But we won't have airplanes in our daily lives, and have these bring us from one place to another safely, without the risks taken by early pioneers like the Wright Brothers in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Or even the tragic accidents that resulted in key learnings for the industry.

Although accidents may still happen, the airline industry and others like the automotive, chemical, pharmaceutical, food, and other industries try their best to use the latest best safety practices from decades of experience.

Whenever there is an airplane or auto crash, or a food- or pharmaceutical-related death, these industries often enact a sudden pause on the use of their product. Countries and airlines ground their fleets, while automotive, food and drug companies can do a recall. All this to prevent more deaths or harm.

Unfortunately for the Titan submersible disaster, this was not the case. Founder/CEO Stockton Rush did not think too highly of safety and thought that innovation was more important. Where he made a mistake, however, was in thinking that you could not innovate safely. Take, for example, his statement quoted in various news reports: "You know, there's a limit. At some point safety just is pure waste. I mean if you just want to be safe, don't get out of bed. Don't get in your car. Don't do anything. At some point, you're going to take some risk, and it really is a risk/reward question. I think I can do this just as safely by breaking the rules."

Contrast that with the 1982 Johnson & Johnson Tylenol cyanide poisonings in Chicago. During that year, several people who took Tylenol died because the capsules had been adulterated and laced with cyanide by an outsider. J&J took the lead and did not hesitate to pull Tylenol off the shelves in all geographies, and totally redesigned it with the caplet form we are all familiar with today. Although the perpetrator has never been caught, the tragedy did result in the introduction of tamper-resistant product packaging. The next year, Congress also passed a law ("the Tylenol bill") to prevent product tampering, and the FDA established federal guidelines to implement that law.

It is fine to develop new products and services with new, untested materials or procedures if one does the extensive testing and regulatory approvals needed prior to release. Using untested products and services for actual commercial operations without extensive testing and submitting to industry accreditation will only spell doom in the end.

It is the job of a company leader to set the tone for safety. You see all these "Safety is Job 1" in factories and in other places. Companies may have safety operating manuals, safety officers, and other appearances of practicing safety.

But unless a company leader actually lives and breathes safety, both in practice and in pronouncements, that company is actually unsafe.

Prioritizing Safety In Your Company

If you recall the saying in the medical profession to "first do no harm," a similar saying might be useful for all industries. In fact there are very few products and services that do not require some sort of safety in mind. Even a comedian who yells fire in a theatre could cause panic.

No Sacred Cows

Each industry has its own safety practices, but aside from the talk, there is also workplace culture. Something as simple as requiring all employees not to run, to hold the handrails while using the stairs, from the CEO to junior staff, is an example of a consistent safety policy. The fact that even the CEO is not exempt from the policy amplifies the power of the rule.

Ensuring Mistakes Are Not Possible

Well-thought-out policies also help with safety. In the pharmaceutical industry, for example, a manufacturing line for painkillers would never shift or mix that line to vitamins because of the risk of mixing products. Instead of relying on the best efforts of factory workers, the policy of dedicating a factory manufacturing line to a certain product type ensures that there is no risk of making a product mixing mistake.

Communication About Safety

The important thing to remember about corporate safety communications is that management should ensure that all public pronouncements, actual policies, and the workplace culture itself should be consistent in prioritizing safety. A nonchalant comment on safety by the CEO could undermine volumes of policies and years of work by middle management and junior staff.

To sum up, no matter what a company's written directives, middle management, and marketing materials say, the actions of the CEO and management dictate the kind of safety culture it will have. If the top leaders won't walk the talk, that company is unsafe no matter what they claim.