The management of safe business operations requires an ongoing, systematic effort to find and fix workplace hazards before employees are injured. It’s also known as a Safety and Health Management System (SHMS). An SHMS requires support from leadership and employee participation (including the acting involvement of any union if employed in your organization) and hazard detection and assessment, prevention and control opportunities for education and training; and regular evaluation of the program and improvement.

The conventional approach is to blame the cause of accidents on the workers. Herbert W. Heinrich’s 1930s theory that 85-95 percent of accidents result from unsafe actions by individuals fueled the development of a variety of behavior-based safety (BBS) methods. In recent years advocates of quality approach safety by recognizing that accidents are caused by processes and systems, and employ quality tools to minimize the likelihood of them happening.

Managers must be able to convey the message that keeping their business safe is an essential aspect of their job. This can be done through explicit comments and reviews of performance and bonuses. LyondellBasell for instance, is clear to its employees that no matter how low their OSHA recordable injury rates are, if there is an accident virtual executive gathering that is severe on the site, the manager will not be awarded any bonus.

SAFe is configurable and scalable. This allows each organization to adapt the Framework for their own development environment. SAFe has a spanning panel that includes additional roles as well as artifacts that aren’t found in Essential SAFe. Click each icon in the spanning palette to find out more about how it can be utilized to your particular situation.