Page 65 - Serious Incident Prevention How to Achieve and Sustain Accident-Free Operations in Your Plant or Company

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Management Commitment and Leadership 43

process. Reviews should focus on understanding incident prevention
processes in place, results achieved, identifying reinforcement opportuni-
ties, and ensuring team-to-team linkage.
Sustaining a common focus throughout the organization is a challeng-
ing management responsibility. However, such alignment behind a common
purpose is essential in leveraging the support of all levels of the organiza-
tion needed for achieving breakthrough improvements. The benefits pro-
vide a generous return for the management time invested.

Allocation of Resources

Stated objectives not backed by adequate resources ring hollow. In
many organizations the landscape is dotted with the gravestones of failed
initiatives that were inadequately resourced. Such failures waste the organi-
zation’s finite energy and undermine management credibility.
Organizational resources of the appropriate type and quantity are essential
for new initiatives to succeed. Management leadership, together with a sys-
tematic process, is required to ensure management time, staffing, training,
and funding are allocated to successfully support company objectives.

Knowledge of Results

Sustaining a high level of support for an initiative requires an effective
measurement and feedback system. It is difficult to comprehend manage-
ment tolerating a key performance objective that does not have an effective
system for monitoring progress toward meeting the objective. Certainly,
measurement and feedback systems are usually well established for some
organizational objectives, such as profitability, productivity, and cost con-
trol. Serious incident prevention may be designated as a key objective, but
that fact does not ensure appropriate measurement and feedback systems
are in place to provide the performance information needed to achieve and
sustain success.
Managers are usually aware of a facility’s past history of incidents, but
they may not be informed of current performance in executing the “up-
stream” work necessary to prevent future incidents. At best, managers may
receive results of area safety audits. However, audits are often focused on
regulatory compliance rather than effectiveness in the broader task of iden-
tifying and executing all of the work critical to preventing incidents. At
worst, management’s feedback is limited to the frequency of common in-
juries, with no system in place for monitoring leading indicators for sus-
taining serious incident-free operations.