Some companies will openly show signs that state “Safety First” as one of their company values.
While this indeed sounds noble and well meaning, in reality it directly conflicts with the main purpose of the business – which is to make money for the owners, employees or stockholders either through sales of a product or offer of a service.
We will advance that it makes more sense for safety to be considered an integral part of the business – akin to the 3 legs of a stool - all equally as important to the overall continued success of the business. The 3 main priorities would be productivity, product or service quality and safety.
Consider now how much more sense this makes from a day to day operational perspective and employees being better able to conceptualize the relationship and importance of all 3 priorities working together equally for success.
Visualizing one of the main priorities failing causing the stool to fall over might help.
Keeping this perspective could make safety a more realistic concept for all concerned.
"Normalcy Bias" Explained
Might this condition also relate to how workers view workplace safety...read and see....
The phenomenon of normalcy bias refers to a mental state people enter when facing a disaster. It causes people to underestimate both the possibility of a disaster occurring and its possible effects.
This often results in situations where people fail to adequately prepare for a disaster, and on a larger scale, the failure of the government to include the populace in its disaster preparations.
The assumption that is made in the case of the normalcy bias is that since a disaster never has occurred that it never will occur.
It also results in the inability of people to cope with a disaster once it occurs. People with a normalcy bias have difficulties reacting to something they have not experienced before.
People also tend to interpret warnings in the most optimistic way possible, seizing on any ambiguities to infer a less serious situation.
Source: Wikipedia
