Dale Hamil
Illinois Electric Works
Granite City, Illinois
Management Services Committee Member
Why is it that a good driver is always associated with being“ safe, ”but a good employee is more associated with being “productive”? It’s true, isn’t it? When you think of a driver being a “good driver,” don’t you automatically think of his driving record? How many accidents or close calls has the person had? How many tickets has he been issued? Seldom do you think about how well he stays between the lines or how fast he drives. You probably don’t even care if he makes perfectly symmetrical left turns. His skill set is secondary to his driving, or rather safety, record.
Everyone wants to be a good driver and every employer wants his employees to drive safely. Driving safely is the number one criteria for being a good driver.
Safety should be everyone’s goal
Why, then, would we consider any employee to be evaluated differently when working at his normal tasks? A good employee should be a safe employee. The best employee should be the safest employee.
To further my point, perform a Google search on “what makes a good employee?” Your results will most likely focus on productivity measurements. You will be hard pressed to find any authoritative reference that mentions safety as one of the top 10 attributes of a good employee. And yet an unsafe employee is regarded as a pariah by his peers and management alike.
Choosing the safest path
A safe employee, like a safe driver, thinks about the task at hand clearly, evaluates the various ways to get to the destination and chooses the safest and surest path to success. This attribute makes a safe employee the best employee from a quality standpoint. Thinking a job through from a safety viewpoint is the best approach for making certain the job gets done right and that no one gets hurt.
I put more faith in an employee who thinks a task through thoroughly and then acts, rather than one who acts too quickly — even if he uses habits developed over a long period. Situations change and the tried and true habits may not apply just as the little-used railroad tracks never seem to have a train at the crossing. One day when you drive across the tracks,the train may arrive.If you have failed to evaluate the conditions that day at the crossing, the consequences will be dire.
Evaluate every situation
To succeed as a service center, consider safety as a driver for excellence. For us to succeed as motor repair specialists, each situation has to be evaluated for the right process to accomplish the task at hand safely every time. Any employer would be disappointed if the job was done perfectly but an employee was injured. Another way to look at it is that you would be disappointed if a car driven by your teenager arrived at home but he or she managed to have a “fender bender” along the way. Thinking the job through makes every task as a challenge for safety and excellence.
We all share the desire to be the best. Did you ever get angry after seeing a driver being unsafe? Have you ever had that same feeling when you saw an employee doing something without practicing safety? You should. Remember,safety drives excellence. To be the best means being the safest.
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