Mainstreaming Safety into Good Management Practice in the Workplace Environment

Few authors would disagree that safety is in essence a managerial issue, and that when safety is mainstreamed and embedded into the management of a company, would be an indication of good management practice. Though this statement could be faulted, it is argued in this article that the existence of a large and often visible safety department in a company, could be misleading and does not necessarily imply that safety is really “embedded” nor “mainstreamed”. This article postulates that the mainstreaming of safety should involve more than just being a managerial issue, backed by a large department and strict safety rules and regulations. Rather, safety should be part of the “DNA” of a company. The departure of this paper is that safety in the workplace is essentially a human sciences issue and to embed safety in the “DNA” of a company, needs a paradigm shift from the popular current behaviourist paradigm of thinking about safety management, to the complexity paradigm of thinking in order to create the biggest possible overlap amongst both employer and employees’ attitudes and behaviour towards managing safety in the workplace. In absence of the latter, safety in the workplace runs the risk of getting stuck in the typical behaviourist driven input-output model with its own limitations reflected in just a positive attitude, or just a form of tolerated behaviour, and considered to be just another issue among various others that management should pay attention to in the workplace