As a leader of an occupational safety and health program, you will be responsible for setting goals that will drive continuous improvement. Do you think having a goal of zero injuries is effective at driving continuous improvement? Include how this goal will support or detract from employee involvement. Respond to another student’s post with a comment that supports his or her position or provides an alternative point of view.
ALSO PLEASE REPLY TO ANOTHER STUDENTS COMMENT BELOW WITH A POSITIVE COMMENT RESPONSE
Alex:
Hello, my names Alex. I live in a small town called Loch Broom, which is in Nova Scotia (Canada). I currently work as a locomotive engineer (train driver) and am working on completing my BS in Environmental Managment with hopes of working with the department of fisheries or similair here in Nova Scotia doing ocean related conservation.
As a leader of an OSH program, I would think having a goal of zero injuries could be a driving factor for improvment, depending how it was handled. One railroad I previously worked for would take any incident and find a way to blame the employee, for instance, person walking next to the rail track on a hot day tripped over an old peice of rail that was in the rocks, fell and cut there hand open. The company punished this person for not wearing gloves, even though it was not in our rules, they added the rule the next day. I don’t believe the zero injuries is effective in this way, I think that accidents, although majorily preventable, is not 100% preventable. The goal, of course should be to be ahead of them and preventing them, and in that way effective if the team is under the same mind set, but understanding that, and this is true in every job I have ever had, somethings just aren’t foreseeable.
