Should Safety Managers be good listeners?

Safety managers must be good listeners. It has been my experience that few if any reports from people participating in safety suggestions are actually "trivial."

My experience is actually just the opposite. My experience is that everyone who came to my office to make a report had an important idea to share or an important here-to-fore unreported risk to which to bring our attention.

By listening to the person reporting and taking time to clarify their concern, our safety programs achieved two important goals. First, we found risks that only one person recognized. Funny how in an organization of 300 people, that only one person will see and be willing to report a very valid hazardous risk. Not sure why that is so, but it is. Second, by listening to all who came in to report, and publishing all reports and recognizing the best each week, we developed the excellent reputation of being the "good listener." You would be amazed at the things that really need to be fixed that no one else noticed or bothered to tell anyone about.

So, my suggestion is do not worry about "triviality." In fact the report may be of quite some significance when you later understand its true potential for prevention.

Again that is my experience and I would add, that by doing so, our safety program achieved the goal of reducing losses due to injuries and deaths, property damaged or destroyed to zero. So, I would say that this program worked very well in four very different organizations.

Can Safety Be Done by One Manager? I would add, that Safety is not a job that can be done by one. In fact at my pilot association we had 14 committees that dealt with some portion of the safety pie, yes 14! And we were not the company, we were just the pilot group. Safety is not something that can be done from an asset poor point of view! Safety requires a great deal of attention.
What many airlines have found is that by failing to do the safety job of prevention well, that instead they wind up doing the mishap investigation job. And what a huge waste of time and money that is!!

There has never been a mishap investigation in which I participated, where in the end the conclusion that this mishap was preventable was not reached!