Safety isn’t Job 1, as so often claimed. If safety were Job 1, we’d never leave the house. We’d never cross a street. We’d never get in a car or on a plane.
If safety were Job 1, companies would go out of business rather than send employees out to drill for oil, mine iron ore, operate a drill press or a band saw, or drive a truck in New Jersey.
Let’s admit it. Doing the job is Job 1. Doing it safely is Job 1 ½, or Job 2, or Job 1.2, or whatever you want to call it. Are there times that the safety risks are such that the job shouldn’t go on? Sure. Is it every employee’s responsibility to make those decisions at times? Yes. Is it leadership’s job to help ensure those decisions are made properly and supported? Absolutely.
Even more importantly, it’s leadership’s job to minimize the likelihood that front-line employees and managers have to make those difficult decisions about walking off the job or doing the job unsafely. But it’s also leadership’s job to ensure that customers are pleased, shareholders and lenders are satisfied, employees are respected and treated fairly, and laws are obeyed. At different times, those are all Job 1. Balancing those jobs is difficult in the best of times.
That’s the challenge leaders face every day, but especially in companies under stress. When the price of your product drops by half, survival is Job 1. We all know it. Companies under stress face huge demands to cut costs, reduce margins of safety, and do whatever it takes to get the job done faster and cheaper.
There are no easy solutions. But there are some important questions to ask and steps to take. I explore those challenge and questions in a new article on “Managing Risks Under Stress: Challenges for Leaders.” I invite you to take a look at the article and share your own experiences and insights here.
As that article notes, leaders cannot be paralyzed by these risks; if they are, their companies will not survive. The companies that succeed are the ones who adapt, not abandon, their risk governance.
[Scott Nadler is a Senior Partner at ERM and Program Director at US BCSD. Opinions on this site are solely those of Scott Nadler and do not necessarily represent views of those quoted or cited, ERM or its partners or clients, or US BCSD, its members or partners. To share this post, see additional posts on Scott’s blog or subscribe please go to snadler.com. I also invite you to follow me on Facebook or Twitter.]