The Three-Legged Stool

If you’re struggling over how to get started improving your culture and safety performance, try thinking of the effort as a three-legged stool.  All three legs are equally important and without one, the stool will fail.  In no particular order, the legs are:

Safe Places (the physical environment or worker interface to remove hazards)

Safe People (equipping the individual to avoid hazards, often driven by climate & / or culture)

Safe Processes (organizational oversight, sustaining systems and learning to manage hazards)

The concept is not new, but it can sometimes get lost in the clutter of trying to develop sophisticated management systems, or implementing the next, shiny new initiative.  The truth is this doesn’t have to be complicated.  An article recently published in the American Society of Safety Engineers’ professional journal “Professional Safety”, (May, 2016), Daryl Balderson asserted that one must consider the three legs in the context of overlapping hazard attributes and the impact they have from the worker interface to the development of systems and processes. 

For example, housekeeping is emphasized in the safety process as a procedure outlining requirements, a safe person when workers are held to that standard or when trained on expectations.  The safe place occurs when housekeeping has been accomplished to maintain a safe working environment. 

Hazard control in the context of a broad emphasis on exposures and how they affect the workplace is critical to the mitigation of worker injuries and building a positive safety culture.