A Little Safety Incident

While visiting a large food-processing plant, I was waiting in the lobby for my appointment and noticed a sign by the security doors. As part of the safety program at this plant, there was an automated check-in, check-out process for entering the plant to keep track of how many people were in the building in the case of emergency.

Every employee and guest required an RFID pass going in and going out so the monitoring system could tell at any instant how many people were in the building. As I registered with the receptionist, she was searching for a pass for me when my host arrived. Looking through a filing cabinet for a few seconds, she failed to find a pass and they both decided not to bother. So I went in without a pass. Funny thing is, the man I was meeting with was the safety and quality manager for the plant.

Now, the building didn't burn down and there was no accident. But, a tiny little breach like this IS a safety incident, even though it didn't turn into an injury or loss. You can have the greatest high tech system in the world, but people still need to use it. And managers/leader especially need to model and demonstrate as part of building the system-wide safety culture. Just because you get away without an injury doesn't mean your safety program is working.