Integration, Alignment, and Proactive Methodology

Getting safety right means engaging and aligning the right levels of the organization in the right ways. Workers are present at the point of exposure and are critical to safety improvement, but there is a limit in the scope of their impact. Leaders can make decisions about resources and organizational direction, but they are limited in their ability to enact the particulars of work at the front line. And supervisors and middle managers express the organizational culture and priorities to the workforce while managing and representing that workforce to the larger organization. When activities work in concert, however, employees at every level create a platform on which safety, and other critical business performance, can be built. BST's Leading with Safety® approach, based on a validated model that defines the elements that influence safety outcomes, helps organizations connect employees at every level for world-class performance. Our focus and project management discipline ensure that our clients are set up for success at each step of the process.

The Blueprint for Safety Transformation is a conceptual model that shows the key elements needed for sustainable safety excellence: The Working Interface • This is where exposure to injury occurs — where people come together with equipment, facilities, and the processes through which work gets done. Safety Enabling Systems • These are the systems used to identify and eliminate or mitigate exposure. Organizational Sustaining Systems • These systems or business processes help assure that safety enabling systems are used as intended, but are not specific to safety. Culture • Often described as “the way we do things in this organization”, culture influences the day-to-day effectiveness of both enabling and sustaining systems. Leadership • Placed at the top of the model, leadership drives culture and influences the design and use of enabling and sustaining systems.

While each of these elements is independently important, long-term success and stellar safety performance requires integration and alignment of the elements. When true integration happens, safety becomes a part of the fabric of the organization rather than a stand-alone activity.