- Understanding the risk appetites of the workforce and top management is valuable when growing a corporate OSH culture and governing an organization’s safety and health management system.
- Failure to manage the relationship between the workforce and top management may increase risk and result in severe loss events.
- Risk control treatments are available for counteracting opposing risk appetites on a worksite.
- Workers presenting elevated risk appetites should not be deployed to high-risk job tasks.
Imagine you are an upper-level manager conducting a safety walk on your worksite with your OSH director. You place a high value on your low risk appetite gained through personal experiences and learning from the wisdom of others. You also see your involvement in these safety observations as critical to your company’s OSH culture while developing your eye for safety. As you and your director round the corner, you observe a long-term employee standing on the top cap of a 12-ft stepladder while overreaching to change the lightbulb in an energized overhead fixture. Imagine your consternation.
