Event Safety Insights Issue Four | Summer 2017 | Page 29

occur. An event that rocks their world such as flirting with bankruptcy, a significant loss of sales and customers, or los- ing a million dollars, might get peoples’ attention. (Heath- field, How to Change your Company Culture, 2016) One lesson to be learned from successful cases is the change process goes through a series of phases that usually require a considerable length of time. A second lesson is, critical mis- takes in any of those phases can have a negative impact on the mission, slowing momentum and negating hard-won gains. Most people have relatively little experience purposely affecting change. Even very capable people often make at least one big error. So, as you begin or restart your organiza- tion’s safety campaign, accept the fact you are probably go- ing to fail at some aspect of this and emotionally prepare for it. Genesis To get started, we must understand that organizational lead- ership is often focused on the business of the business and if times are good the status quo is often viewed as acceptable. To get their attention, an individual or group often facilitates a frank discussion with management of potentially unpleas- ant facts that will be experienced if change does not occur. Since there is an almost universal human tendency to shoot the bearer of bad news, especially if the head of the organiza- tion is resistant to change, outsiders are often hired and relied upon to prepare and deliver the bad news. Our industry does not have to reinvent the wheel - we can and are learning from others. Let’s look at the lessons learned by our sibling, the film and television industry. Here is some background courtesy of Julia Smith’s 2014 article “Holly- wood’s Health and Safety Nightmare”: The public became truly aware of the dangers in the film industry after the Twilight Zone incident in 1982 that killed actor Vic Morrow and two children aged six and seven. Ironically, Morrow’s line in that scene was to be: “I’ll keep you safe, kids. I promise. Nothing will hurt you. I swear to God.” In the aftermath, numerous new safety codes were im- plemented. No doubt the public’s focus on this horrific incident, raised awareness about the film industry and its safety record. This in turn had an impact on the di- rection of Health and Safety in that industry. Today the film and television industry has an aggres- sive safety passport program administered by the Contract Services Administration Trust Fund (CSATF). Signatory producers fund the organization by making contributions to the CSATF based on hours worked by employees covered by collective bargaining agree- ments. Even with this program, the film and television industry suffers a significant number of injury incidents yearly. Many of these injury incidents are the result of the pressure freelancers place on themselves, they feel if they don’t take certain risks- someone else is willing to and they will be out of a job. (Smith, 2014) There are obvious similarities we share with the film and tele- vision industry and we would be wise to consider the lessons learned during that industry’s transition as it closely mirrors our own. Measuring Success You may have seen ESA Vice President Steven Adelman, speak at a conference or training session. One of Steve’s key points of advice is that you should be able to present something that your attorney can hold up in court that validates you have es- tablished and continue to improve your safety policies and practices over time. For now, at least in the US, our industry has little recorded data on reportable injuries and damage incidents. Without hard data to analyze, we cannot properly measure the impact improved safety efforts are having on the industry. While we cannot measure until we have the data, we can measure the c hanges in our actions themselves. Meaning, we need to re- cord the changes we make in our individual safety programs. We use the markers identified in those records to measure and determine our progress, including our successes and fail- ures. Some questions you may be asking yourself: Q1: Is it extra work? Yes. Q2: Is it easy? Not really, no. 29