I wrote here in an earlier post about safety officers and hw they are sometimes (erroneously) considered expendable when it comes time to streamline staff during a rough economic patch. Sometimes, profits came before safety and safety can be an afterthought with somecompanies. Well, here we have another example of this condescension of sorts, when it comes to workplace health and safety. And we know many of yu know about these – either by filiing these out yourself or being the one for whom they are filled.
Yep, the safety observation cards. Also the incident forms. Oh, and don’t forget the first-aid form when an injury occurs.
We’ll focus on the most common form, the safety observation form. There is a phenomena out there surrounding these little pieces of bureaucracy – it’s called pencil whipping. One of my colleagues, Tim Ludwig, recently wrote an article for ProfessionalSafety magazine that discussed the concept of pencil whipping (you can see the full article here), what it is, how it comes to be and how to identify it and correct it.
[Photo courtesy of USDAgov via Flickr using a Creative Commons license]Safety inspections and observations can be onerous with paperwork, and there is a risk with some companies to engage in pencil whipping, which can be dangerous for workers.
What is pencil whipping?
Pencil whipping is a euphemism that refers to filling out forms or documents regarding an action that is not actually executed. For example, the safety observation cards that are at most workplaces with a safety program. These cards imply that the person filling out the card is doing so upon conducting an actual observation of a worker. Many times, however, companies ask for a certain number of these cards to be submitted every shift, every week or every month. And oftentimes, supervisors or managers, in order to look “good” to the boss, might miss one small step – the actual observation – and fill out a number of these cards and submit them as if to look like he or she cares abut the safety of workers. The idea that a manageror supervisor would sit at a desk and fill out and submit a number of observation cards without actually doing the observation – that is called pencil whipping.
What contributes to pencil whipping?
There are several factors that contribute to the pencil-whipping phenomena. First can be the “quotas” of observation cards that are required by a company. Second could be the onerousness of the safety regulations and/or the length of the form that needs to be filled out. In many workplaces, the number of safety items on an observation card are not always plausible in that environmnt and are just a “CYA” item to protect the company. When things are too onerous or arduous, it can be easy for the person filling out these safety cards to cut corners and fill out the forms as quickly as possible so they can move on to more “productive” things. Third could be the familiarity of the safety cards – filling out the same form week after week for several years can lead a supervisor or manager to run on “auto-pilot” on these cards and fill most of them out the same way just to expedite the process of completing the cards for safety compliance purposes. Fourth could simply be history – if the company has had a clean or nearly clean record of safety, it may seem OK to cut a corner here or there on the safety forms simply because nothing has happened in the last few months or year.
How might we combat this problem?
Have a workplace injury take place.
OK, no, not really. We would never encourage that, but it certainly would pose a wake-up call to people who refer to those safety cards and can lead to a detailed investigation into whether pencil-whipping has occurred and compromised he safety program as a whole and the worker specifically, no doubt.
But in lieu of an injury, some ways that Mr. Ludwig suggested to fight the pencil-whipping scourge is to vary the observation card regularly (like once a quarter or twice a year, for example) by having the observer report either on very different safety items or a couple of variations – a company could tweak it just enough that a manager or supervisor will actually have to read the card before filling out anything. Another way is ot shorten the card to only the behaviors that seem to be most common and easiest to observe and seem to be the ones with highest injury risk. Third, companies should look away fro “getting the numbers” in terms of observations in a given period – “numbers” should apply only to sales and prospects, not to safety of employees. Instead, look for ways to put out rewards for good behaviors or observing at-risk behaviors – these would incentivize an actual observation and employees knowing that they are or were being observed. And when they think they are being watched, they are more likely to do the right things to keep themselves and others safe.
So whip your safety program into shape, not your pencil.