to BE SAFE, YOU should ASSess your safety culture: A Workplace Safety Culture Assessment Guide - Tapa blanda

How safe is you workplace? How safe are you? This is a straight-talking, easy reading, humorous guide for assessing the safety culture of the workplace and of an individual as well. Offers suggestions, things to look for, and questions to consider when assessing the workplace safety culture.

I'm an operations technician II (referred to as a “B” operator in some plants) working for an independent power producer at a 425MW cogeneration power plant in southeast Texas. Born and raised in Long Beach, California, I moved from that area at age 36 and spent the next 17 years near Sacramento, California. In 2006, I transferred and moved to Texas. My adult working career began with seven years in retail banking starting as bookkeeping clerk and working through the various positions to operations officer. Following that I worked three years in truck leasing starting as rental agent and moving up to district manager. I finally started making a livable wage in 1982 when I went to work for a major oil company as an operator trainee at an oil refinery. In 1989, I left the refinery to work at a cogeneration power plant and remain in that line of work today. My industrial plant experience has included two years as shift supervisor, four years as operations supervisor, and two years as the operations manager of three facilities. I’m currently an operator technician by my own choice and not because of any demotion. I resigned from the operations manager job, spent some quality time with my kids, and then hired back in as a “B” operator. That’s my preference at this stage of my life. With a total of fourteen years of management experience in three different industries, I’ve spent many years on both the “us” and “them” sides of the workforce and have thus formed my general opinions of management-types and the real workers, as I like to call them. I’m not an expert on safety and I’m not a safety professional. I’m just a power plant operator that would like to see safety taken more seriously than what I’ve witnessed at some plants.