Corporates Driving Zero-Harm Objectives: Safety First or Business First?

Like the oft quoted Shakespearean adage, 'To be or not to be', the safety conundrum always poses a dilemma - to adhere or not to adhere to the safety norms - as Indian culture is not basically safety-oriented and safety is not in our mindset. This gets further complicated by the eternal question that a businessman faces - safety first or business first - which greatly impacts the way the corporates drive their Zero-Harm objectives. There are differentials in definition of safety observations and safety culture among managers, directors, contractors, and engineers. For an employer, the safety consideration should be an incident-free environment; but for the employees, it should be injury-free. This makes a vast difference in what we look for while being on a field visit in plants. If our outlook is injury-free, we observe at-risk behaviour and spot-correct it, whereas an incident-free bent of mind would focus not necessarily on the person but on the targets, profit, plant, production etc. Safety culture in any corporate needs to be adopted as procedures that are communicated, demonstrated, reinforced and celebrated, not merely raising messages of safety-first by managers or directors. The present qualitative study comprised of field visits to 10 site locations from where 250 managers and 235 contractor staff were sampled across diverse Indian locations. It concludes that safety culture is a big turning point for corporate businesses; behaviour is not only a science but also a collective wisdom, and companies are increasingly embracing safety culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]