Do You Have an Electrical Safety Program or a Culture of Safety?

By: Mike Enright

Have you ever resolved to lose weight for New Years? If so, you know just how hard it is to go from planning to execution to lifestyle.

Did it fail? If so, why? Was it a lack of planning? Did you not try? Unlikely. More likely than not, you had a plan in place and were excited about where this was going to take you. You religiously followed routine for a couple weeks—but then, you started to slip. A cheat day here or there turns into twice a week. Skipping leg day turned into skipping the next day’s cardio. A month or so later, and you’re back to where you started—if not worse off.

The Difference between Programs and Culture

Too often, the same issue happens when you try to implement an electrical safety program. You drew up the program, trained workers on the right way to do something, and felt confident that everything was on the right path.

Then, the snowballing begins. An employee takes a shortcut, sees that it saves him or her time, and repeats the behavior. Other employees see this and start to emulate it. The unsafe practice becomes ingrained in behavior and soon, employees start to believe that “it’s the way we do things around here.”

Trying to correct a behavior is met with eye rolls or the ever-popular “it won’t happen to me; I know what I’m doing.” The unsafe behaviors are now ingrained into your operations. In fact, this is a culture in and of itself—a hazard culture.

Creating a positive safety culture is vastly different than writing a program and hoping everyone holds up their end of the bargain. Culture is instilled, and if you’re looking to take steps to make this happen, we just released a guide to help you do just that.

Free Guide: Developing a Culture of Electrical Safety

Electrical safety programs are written to ensure that management and employees both understand their roles and responsibilities, that work and inspection processes are documented, and that personal protective equipment requirements are followed. However, programs only go so far, and over time, workers can lose focus, take shortcuts, and ultimately begin to ignore the program you worked so hard to develop.

Alternatively, a safety culture is different. Something instilled into the way the company operates and the actions that everyone takes at your organization, a safety culture is behavioral, not policy driven.

If you are looking to understand the basics of developing and ingraining a culture of safety on top of your safety program, we are happy to announce a new guide designed to do just that. Available for free courtesy of Enespro, Developing a Culture of Electrical Safety explores the differences between a program and a culture and discusses the first steps to implementing this program.

Preview the guide below and download it here.

Listen to Your Employees

At Enespro, our goal is to provide your firm with the best last line of defense—your personal protective equipment. As an innovator in the field and a provider of arc rated PPE, we understand that there are many steps you should take before you need our product—elimination, substitution, engineering controls, awareness, and administrative controls.

However, we also know that PPE is still necessary for many tasks and your workers shouldn’t dread the idea of having to wear it. Part of any good safety culture is the ability to listen to your employees, and if workers hate the PPE, they will put their own lives at risk to avoid it.

Your workers may not know who we are just yet, but if they are sick of the discomfort lack of breathability, and constriction that comes from legacy arc flash PPE, you’ll want to know about us and our award-winning products.