Blame senior management’s perceived lack of commitment to safety, and you won’t get front-line crews to buy-in to the safety program. Gallup says that only 31.5% of North American workers are actively engaged in their work. That means 7 out of every ten people are not fully engaged in their work. This includes safety managers and front-line supervisors as well as senior management. But, as the survey points out, senior managers still engage in higher percentages than their employees. Still, these are a disturbing numbers. It’s easy to complain about how tough it is to be a safety person when senior managers are seemingly disengaged with safety. But it is tiresome that some safety people use senior management as a scapegoat. “Until senior management improves their commitment to safety, our safety culture won’t improve,” you hear some safety people chime. So they give up trying to get over the hurdle. And that’s all it is; a hurdle. It’s not a closed road. It’s not a barricade. It’s something you have to either get over or go around. It's not insurmountable.


