Getting to “Yes.” 10 Questions to Ask About your SIF Elimination Plan

Eliminating serious injuries and fatalities (SIFs) in an organization is difficult and takes collaboration across all organizational levels and all work areas. A good plan makes things easier to accomplish – even if you need to flex once you start executing the work!

Start building your plan by asking these 10 questions. They may appear deceptively straightforward, however getting to “yes” will require engagement and partnering with nearly everyone in your business.

Look at each question to help you get started on the road to “yes”!

Question 1: Do you know your high-risk tasks with SIF potential?

The first question is straightforward and offers you a chance to engage your operations team as well as those responsible for safety. You need to list the high-risk tasks/activities people do in the path of executing work. Remember to also include the work your contractors do.

Question 2: Do you have controls in place for each hazard?

This question can be hard. It will require verifying which controls you depend on to keep people separated from potential hazards. Remember, there are often multiple layers of protection.

Question 3: Are your layers of protection functioning as designed and providing redundancy to ensure separation from the hazard?

Layers of protection often fail not because of a problem with the controls, but rather because of how the controls are understood and used (or not understood and used). Failure often results from specific onboarding processes for new employees, how reliable employees are in maintaining various controls, understanding why redundancy is built in, and how the management of change processes are communicated.

Question 4: Do you have a decision tree for SIF potential that drives alignment across the organization?

The fourth question is all about decision logic. Using a SIF decision tree makes several aspects of answering this question easier. It will build alignment around what has SIF potential and what does not have SIF potential, reducing circular discussions about whether an event is a potential SIF (SIFp) or not. Read more about SIF potential here.

Question 5: Do your people know the most critical SIF precursors?

Question five transitions the focus from tools and analysis to educating everyone, from senior leaders to staff to front line employees about the potential for SIF at work. Surprisingly, even organizations who do excellent analysis and build strong SIF tools, tend to fall short of fully understanding SIF precursors.

Question 6: Do you and your team know what action to take around a critical SIF Precursor?

This question emphasizes employees recognizing SIF potential scenarios. It requires that employees know what to do to protect themselves AND that they feel enabled and supported to take the appropriate action. Additionally, do not underestimate the huge role culture plays in people being willing to act. Read more about culture here.

Question 7: Do you have a Pareto chart of your most important SIF precursors?

The seventh question is about focus. When striving to eliminate SIFs it is easy to be distracted by the large number of opportunities. It is important for organizational leaders to carefully consider and prioritize what they are going to tackle and eliminate.

Question 8: Do you have a strategy to guard against overconfidence bias in yourself and others?

Many plans fail to address this critical issue, yet it is a common bias that impacts our decisions. Most people consider themselves to be above average and therefore overestimate their abilities and knowledge. This directly impacts how we think about ourselves and others. As a result, we can easily allow overconfidence to negatively influence our decisions and actions. This is especially important in SIF-sensitive decision making.

Question 9:  Do you know your organization’s “SIF triangle within the triangle?”

This is an opportunity to engage people who have a passion for analysis and enjoy processing safety data. To get to “yes” it is important to map all of the incidents which have the potential to create a SIF or SIFp event. The analysis is done to understand your triangle overall and specifically your SIF triangle, in other words, the SIF triangle within the broader incident triangle. The SIF triangle indicates your SIF potential and varies across organizations due to your organization SIF precursors and amplifiers. The variation we have seen across clients has been 14-57%. Learn more about the “Triangle with the Triangle” in 7 Insights into Safety Leadership. 

Question 10: Have you selected which SIF precursors to focus on and eliminate this year? Do you have a plan to do it?

Question 10 prepares you to shift from talking, studying, and planning to implementing an effective plan of action.

The road to SIF elimination is challenging and takes a bit of effort, but the payoff is huge. The investment you make to “getting to yes” is an opportunity to engage, learn, and make your organization stronger ultimately resulting in positive impacts that go beyond safety.

Learn more about SIF elimination in Tom Krause and Kristen Bell’s book, 7 Insights Into Safety Leadership, or if you are interested in learning more about organizational culture, you can read Tom Krause’s newest book If Your Culture Could Talk: A Story About Culture Change.