Ever wonder what is going on when you are not looking? Ever try to find out?

Pulp and paper mills, no surprise to anyone reading this article, can be extremely hazardous places. I write this not to make you even more concerned than you probably already are, but to suggest an approach that is more effective, is supported by evidence and is much more personally rewarding.

A brief and somewhat incomplete tour of our past history is perhaps useful. We started with machine maintenance. What broke down frequently got a lot more attention and what killed our employees got focus. One maintenance manager once told me that they called it "Opportunity Maintenance - when it broke down, we had an 'opportunity' to fix it". We then shifted to establishing informal best practices that eventually got codified into regulations. We became very compliance oriented and even established awards for being compliant. It helped but was clearly not the whole solution as deaths still occurred on a regular basis. One approach was behavior-based safety which attempted to focus on employee's behavior as being the critical component in the accident chain It turned out that it wasn't and isn't the whole answer. One of the more recent approaches in the past 15 to 20 years has been audits of facilities. These have very mixed results and finding control groups to determine which audits work and which do not is nearly impossible. There are dozens of different types and styles of safety audits and thus, as a whole, they have a uncertain correlation with good results. Does anyone remember the "Hawthorne Effect" of GE fame?

So what does work? The most recent approach seems to be "all of the above". It is essential to know whether our procedures and policies are known and understood by the employees who are affected. It seems that, like the Dutch boy of legend with his finger in the dike, we cannot always have a procedure for everything our employees do. This is the motivation behind the audit but it is clear that a more inclusive approach is needed. We are simply missing too much data on what is happening. Injuries and deaths are still occurring. Hence, we must always wonder what is happening when we are not looking or actively involved in managing the process.

It now seems, that employee perceptions are often on the mark regarding whether the program is working or not. This is our proverbial "canary in the mine". We know there is a problem but we remain unclear exactly what the problem is. This data can be vague, depending on the specificity of the question being asked, but if properly phrased and gently pursued, the employees know when a process is unsafe or in danger of coming apart. This helps in preventing a false sense of security. Make no mistake: well thought out policies and procedures properly enforced are essential. What they do, in addition to driving a stake in the ground about what we want done and how, is allow us to ask much better questions. Instead of asking "How do you go into that confined space?" , we now have the option to ask, "This is what we think we want you to do. Is it possible? Is it hard to do? Does it create other issues? How can we make it easier? Or what can be done to avoid going into it entirely?". This brings on a totally different and much more meaningful discussion with the employees.

This inquiry is possible only when our management, engineering and support staff learn how to conduct inquiries into the actual practice and stop pretending they know what is going on behind the scenes. Most often they do not - unless they ask in a way that solicits information.

So the answer as we walk ourselves toward creating safe, stable, and fully evolved safety programs is to have regulations identifying best practices, regular audits to see if the pieces such as training, accountability and written document guidance are properly managed, and an active healthy ongoing dialogue with employees about the reality of their work practices.

Matt Towne is both an accomplished Certified Safety Professional and a Registered Nurse. He has 33 years experience in 30 countries and 46 states. He has worked at nearly every level of safety - location, division, corporate and now consultant. He owns, operates and is lead consultant for Northeast Industrial Safety Systems, based in New Hampshire. Contact him at mtowne@northeastsafetyconsulting.com www.northeastsafetyconsulting.com.