Think of safety in tree care same way.
That’s the message Bruce Mellott relayed during his presentation titled “The Human Element for Better Safety Performance” on August. 27 at the International Society of Arboriculture (ISA) International Conference and Trade Show in Fort Worth, Texas. Mellott, the vice president of safety for Asplundh Tree Expert Co., explained that optimal safety practices and accident/incident prevention is much more than a set of rules and procedures to follow — and he emphasized throughout the presentation that safe operations always start at the top with management.
“Safety is about setting standards, explaining expectations and holding crew members to those,” Mellott explained. “If [management] allows poor safety practices, they will happen. But, because a manger allowed it to get to that point, they can also fix it. They can change it; it’s within their control.”
Mellott cited research that says 84 to 94 percent of all human error is attributed to “processes, program issues or organizational issues.” Meaning most errors that occur aren’t the fault of the person who committed them. “When something happens, some companies look for someone to hold responsible, so they hold the person who got hurt responsible,” Mellott said. “That’s dumb. Odds are, it’s not that individual that caused the problems. Yes, sometimes it is. But more often than not, it’s something else.”
Mellott, who holds a master’s degree in public health from Tulane University, said that compliance-based systems (very common in industries like arboriculture) go against human nature. “It’s not in our nature to follow rules,” he said. “While rules, policies and procedures are all important, they don’t get us where we need to be, from a safety standpoint. They don’t keep your workers safe, they don’t keep my workers safe. We have to look at it differently.”
“Looking at it differently,” as Mellott said, involves using human performance as a science or a tool to get inside the minds of employees (from the perspective of a manger). In other words, figuring out “why we do what we do, and the way we do it,” Mellott said.
Other points and topics Mellott discussed in his presentation included:
