Safety and Incident Management in the Workplace.

"Safety first", right? Nobody will ever say safety isn't a top priority. Then why is it when bad things happen, people look unprepared? The simple answer: preparation requires trade-offs.

Safety always feels most urgent in the middle of a crisis — not months or years before, when preparation could have made the difference. This isn’t a caring problem. It’s a budget and time-management problem. And when you look at it that way, there are things we can do.

First, preparation needs to be affordable. The more expensive the safety solution, the more it has to compete with other budgets. That part is obvious. The unspoken obstacle is this: how hard do we fight for budgets for things we believe will likely never happen? It’s the classic insurance riddle — you buy insurance for events you hope you’ll never face. And given all the bad things that could happen, it’s mathematically obvious you can’t prepare for everything. More cost-effective preparation means more risks you can prepare for.

Second, preparation needs to use time efficiently. If fighting for budgets is hard, fighting for people’s time feels impossible. You can make employees watch PowerPoints or click through online training, but you can’t make them pay attention. The best preparation creates habits people don’t even realize they’re forming — for events they don’t expect will happen. When the moment comes, they respond better… and only then realize they were prepared all along.

Keywords: Safety and Incident Management in the Workplace.