Human beings have an innate sense of how to keep themselves and their environment safe and healthy. With modern business's current emphasis on safety, health, and the environment both in and out of the workplace, this innate sense is brought to the forefront at work for most people who generally understand what to do and what not to do to remain safe and healthy. Yet, despite this knowledge and well-publicized rules and regulations and safety do’s and don’ts,
People still get hurt on and off the job,
and health and environmental incidents still occur!
Topf Initiatives’ Holistic, Integrated Approach to Safety, Health, and Environmental Improvement achieves results in preventing accidents and injuries by directly addressing personal risk, attitudes and behaviors. Even though traditional safety strategies and procedures, such as:
- Use of protective equipment
- Job/task re-design
- Revamped and well-published procedures (posters, email broadcasts, meetings, training sessions, etc.)
- Safety campaigns (including motivational programs and rewards)
have had success in reducing accidents, injuries, and incidents, they most often yield diminishing returns. Efforts to improve accident/incident rates by instituting programs like these only marginally increase safety, health, and environmental performance.
We at Topf believe that a significantly greater effect can be achieved by directly addressing personal risk behaviors. When we first began examining safety issues back in 1983, we asked the following question:
Which basic human attitudes and behaviors, if effectively addressed and managed, will prevent accidents, injuries, and health/environmental incidents both on and off the job?
Our research to find an answer to this question has resulted in the development of an innovative, practical, and comprehensive process to train (and, in some cases, re-train) people to prevent accidents, injuries, and incidents, both inside and outside of the workplace.
Topf Initiatives program participants increase awareness of their personal roles and responsibilities not only for their own safety and health, but for the safety and health of their coworkers, their entire organization and their families and friends. This increased awareness empowers them to continually improve safety, health, and environmental performance. Topf programs enhance and complement other safety programs, activities, and strategies by providing a context of responsibility and a variety of innovative and effective methods and skills for managing critical safety behaviors and issues. Topf’s unique process contributes to enhancing the culture of an organization to the extent that safety, health, and environmental excellence becomes ingrained in every employee’s daily routine both on and off their jobs.
