Page 67 - Advances In Productive, Safe, and Responsible Coal Mining

Productive, safe, and responsible 4

operations are not possible
without visible safety leadership

Lori Guasta, David R. Lauriski
Predictive Safety SRP, Inc., Centennial, CO, United States

4.1 Who is a safety leader?

Traditionally, working personnel in most organizations are structured in a “chain of
command,” in which managers and supervisors oversee and delegate to their assigned
subordinates, often arranged in various groups or departments that serve different
functions. These leader-subordinate hierarchies are common not only within business
organizations, but also reflected in the culture dynamics in all parts of society, like
politics and government, the military, and families and households.
In most cases, the roles and responsibilities of leaders and subordinates are often
thought of as definite and distinct: people either give direction or receive it; they are
either in charge of others or not. However, in safety-sensitive industries like mining,
leadership pertaining to workplace safety is not limited to only those in supervisory or
management positions.
When speaking to groups of employees in consulting and training work, the authors
often ask individuals to identify themselves if their positions are directly related to
safety. Typically, only a few raise their hands, like the “Safety Manager,” “Safety
Supervisor,” “Safety Technician,” or others whose job title has the word “safety”
in it. On occasion, employees quickly detect that they are being asked a trick question,
because in fact, everyone’s position is directly related to safety.
Safety leadership, simply put, involves engaging in and maintaining behaviors that
help members of a group achieve safety goals. In this sense, it is possible for anyone at
a mine site to be considered a safety leader. No matter one’s title, position, or level of
experience, in mining, safety is everyone’s job. And in turn, everyone has the potential
to actively engage in behaviors that help to promote safety. Safety starts with each
individual at a mine site, as well as with the external stakeholders who also play a role
in ensuring a productive, safe, and responsible workplace.

4.2 Culture is “the way we do things around here”

Culture involves customs and social norms among groups of people—how they greet
and speak to each other, their conversational themes, methods and norms of their inter-
actions, their routines. These practices are what separates one group from another, and
Advances in Productive, Safe, and Responsible Coal Mining. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-101288-8.00008-0
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