SAFESTART History

In 1992 Larry Wilson (SAFESTART™ author) attended a session about using Total Quality Management (TQM) to improve workplace safety. One example the keynote speaker cited involved a pharmaceutical company that was looking to correct a quality problem. The speaker’s consulting group was asked to help. The consulting group discovered that when the plant had to fill rush orders—instead of adhering to stringent procedures for completing one at a time—orders were filled all at once. Employees didn’t think this shortcut was causing any problems. But it was.

“The obvious answer,” said the speaker, “would have been to round up all of the employees and insist they follow procedures.” Instead the entire system was examined. The study revealed that employees were rushing because of mired paperwork flow. After addressing this problem, quality improved and injuries were reduced by 50%. That’s right. 50%. Not one person in the audience questioned this figure. After some careful thought, Larry realized why convention attendees were so quiet. Everyone had been there too.

Up to that point, Larry had been selling, co-producing, and marketing safety training programs for eight years through his company in Canada, Electrolab Training Systems. He had also spent seven years conducting Behavior-Based consulting. Within his first seven years of safety-related work Larry traveled to over 100 companies. Electrolab had over 500 different safety videos to offer its customers. And yet Larry had never seen one video on rushing and its effects on people. Nor had he done any training on rushing or known anyone else who had.

So what is it about rushing that causes or contributes to injuries? And why aren’t we training people on it? These two questions formed the basis of SAFESTART™. During the next three years, onsite with another 70 clients, Larry was implementing advanced safety awareness training.

To begin Larry studied all injury and incident reports dating back as far as ten years for companies he had worked with. Then he “pulled out” those ten to fifteen behaviors involved in 85% of the injuries. By identifying only those behaviors that correspond with a significant increased risk in injury, workers don’t need to learn everything a safety professional knows—just how to observe for key “critical behaviors.” Company after company, site after site, the same four critical behaviors (or if they weren’t performed safely—“critical errors”) could be found on everyone’s checklist.