Safety Profit

What is our purpose?

What is it that we are trying to achieve?

These are the questions at the core of any quest.  These questions should be easily answered by anyone that is following the vision of an organisation.

Sometimes people think every organisation is after money.

They see the measuring tool as the goal.

But it's not money, just ask any charity or volunteer organisation.

The primary aim of any organisation is to survive.

Organisations survive in order to fulfill their goals.

Money is one of the tools to achieving those goals.

Money and safety have an involved relationship.

Safe is even a word to describe a container for money.

Our banks like to portray themselves as trustworthy and safe.  That might be old fashioned thinking now, back in the day, banks used to build impressive columns and stone buildings to instill a feeling of safety in customers.

We think of having money as making us safe from the vagaries of life.

We spend money on insurance to make ourselves feel safer.

It's understandable that we confuse money as the goal.  When in reality what we want is Safety, we want a world where we go home from work every day, without any wounds.

We want a world where the same things happen day after day.

The old curse says;

"May you live in interesting times." 

Safety, means we live in uninteresting times.  In profitable times.

In any organisation we aim to improve the flow of work.

We trim critical paths, we refocus on our organisational goals, we concentrate on our core competencies.

Safety does the same thing.

Safety includes more people though.

Safety involves every stakeholder, it not only involves them, it gives them power to perform actions.

Well, it should do, if done right.

The trouble can be that management see Safety as an imposition, an addition to their workload.    Employees readily pick up on that, and perform accordingly.

Managers such as these are self-fulfilling, they don't see how Safety makes money so they set up the system to fail.  It becomes a token effort.  In the end it does become an imposition.

True Safety Systems involve people, they teach a way of thinking that is truly managerial.  For everyone.

Every employee becomes observant and involved, they notice events in the workplace and get involved because it improves Safety.

That modus operandi also means operations become smoother, and more stable operations mean more money.

Safety means no excitement, no blood on the floor, no screaming sirens and no lawyers.

Safety means not gambling, not risk taking, by assessing risks and balancing against costs.

Exactly what accountants do.