Managing safe business operations requires an ongoing, systematic effort to identify and fix workplace hazards, before workers are injured. It’s also known as a Safety and Health Management System (SHMS). A SHMS requires leadership support and worker participation (including any unions in your company) as well as hazard assessments, prevention and control opportunities for education and training, and a regular evaluation of the program.

The traditional approach blames accidents on workers. Herbert W. Heinrich’s 1930s theory that 85-95 percent of accidents result from unsafe behavior of individuals drove many different behaviors-based safety (BBS) methods. In recent times people who advocate for quality approach safety by recognizing that accidents result from systems and processes and use high-quality tools to decrease the likelihood of them happening.

Managers need to understand that safety is an important aspect of their jobs. This can be done by direct comments or performance reviews as well as bonuses. LyondellBasell for instance, makes it clear to its employees that regardless of how low their OSHA recordable injury rates are, if they have a serious accident on site, the manager will not be awarded a bonus.

SAFe is configurable and scalable. This allows every company to customize the Framework for their own development environment. To facilitate this, SAFe includes a spanning palette with additional roles and artifacts that aren’t part of Essential SAFe. Click safe business management on each icon for more information about how it can be applied to your environment.