Ownership, Responsibility, and Accountability
Ownership
Determining who has ownership in a safety and health management system should be
fairly straightforward. Everyone who works at the company should own at least part of
the system. Everyone has a responsibility to contribute, either by assignment, by design
or inherently to the system. And those who have assigned or designed responsibility
should be accountable to the management or staff of the company for safety performance
in their areas of responsibility. However, the system is “owned” by everyone who
contributes to it. As a machine operator, I would “own” the safe use of my machine. As
a machine shop supervisor, I would “own” the safe use of all my machines, the training
of my machine operators and the activities and maintenance of the safe workplace for my
machine shop area. As a company owner or manager, I would “own” all the safety
related work practices that occur at my company or facility.
Responsibility
Determining who is responsible for the system may be a bit more intricate and involved
than “owning” the system. By being responsible, that means that you are charged with
ensuring that work activities proceed safely and that the safety and health of employees
(either yourself, your co-workers or your underlings) is not jeopardized. You are obliged
to assure that the workplace activities under your control are safe. You have readily
assumed the obligation and duty to make these assurances and you can be depended upon
and relied upon to carry out those duties.
Accountability
Accountability, like ownership, is fairly straight forward. Accountability means that you
will be judged on how well or effectively you carried out the duties you were responsible
for. An accounting or explanation of the actions taken (or not taken) will need to be
made to management or supervision. This is your credibility stake in the process.
Putting It All Together
The easiest way to put the whole system (ownership, responsibility and accountability)
together is to create a strategic plan, that establishes generalized goals for the
management system, and assigns responsible people (who have the authority and
accountability) to implement the actions needed to achieve the goals. The OSHA website
has an excellent outline tool to use for a general safety and health management system
strategic plan. It is reproduced here, for your benefit. The document is available on the
OSHA website at the following address:
http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/safetyhealth/mod4_tools_plan.html
