The safety team's job is to identify and control workplace hazards. Yet, safety personnel are often viewed as a safety hazard themselves.
Despite many attempts to overcome it, there continues to be animosity between the safety team, maintenance workers, and machine operators. Spend some time in a manufacturing facility and you're likely to notice that an "us vs. them" mentality has taken hold.
This is partly due to the equipment that keeps these operations running. There are several unique machines in any given facility, some of which are new while others might be decades old. Operators often rely on their own experience with the machinery to get the most out of it, rather than following a written procedure.
This is where some of the conflict arises. Safety is partly about following rigid practices and following the letter of the law. That means not only telling operators how to do their work, but telling them they've been doing it wrong. And that's not a message those operators take kindly.
It's a serious problem, but not an intractable one. There are steps safety professionals can take to reach workers and help secure buy-in for safer work procedures.
