Questioning your safety

Tuesday, 21 October 2008 18:16

GAIL JANSEN The Pipeline Forty-four hundred hours. That’s the amount of man-hours it has taken SafeThink to write its training program. One thousand hours. That’s the number of hours they’ve tested their training program in pilot programs, working directly with companies in the field. The result? “Ninety per cent of the participants of the pilot programs said they would feel safer if this strategy was widely implemented,” says Art Deane, a SafeThink consultant. Himself, once a professor at the University of Alberta in the field of Human Development, Deane says the key to this innovative new approach to safety training lies in six critical questions trainers, train employees to ask themselves when approaching any situation. “As a researcher,” says Deane, “I’m interested in the idea of asking ourselves questions. Questions that can take us to a deeper level of safety.” Citing an example of an ordinary day-to-day situation, of driving and approaching a corner, Deane says we ask questions of ourselves constantly, to keep us safe.   “Is there another car coming? Is there pedestrian traffic? Do I have time to cross?” Transcribing this type of self-evaluation to the workplace says Deane, is not something that can simply be found in a brochure or on a piece of paper, it is something that needs to be deeply ingrained and most of all practiced. “In this form of training the worker is set up to continually ask himself a series of questions to help him determine if his surrounding condition, actions or possible events, could possibly be deemed hazardous.  If he answers yes to any of the six critical thinking questions, then he is immediately led to more detailed questions to ask of himself.” A program that can be applied to any industry, Deane says the hazardous nature of the energy sector makes this an ideal training program for those in the field. “It teaches them to rely, not on an outside force, or training, but to look within and ask themselves the questions to which only they know the answers.  If for whatever reason they don’t have the answer, then they know not to proceed further until they do have that answer.” Unlike other static safety programs, the SafeThink program allows workers to evaluate changes and respond to them, in a safe, well thought out manner, that allows them to remain vigilant and aware at all times. A program that is easily integrated into existing Health and Safety Programs, it is also one that can utilize your own staff and safety consultants to implement, by using their “Coach-the-Coach” Training Program.  This allows you to continuously train new staff or contractors on site to be vigilant about their own safety. For ultimately, we are all responsible for our own safety, we may just need to know what questions we need to ask in order to ensure it.