About RPT > Our Approach to Safety

Click here for an explanation of the FailSafe Workplace® Model.

According to traditional management practices, business must be willing to tolerate some small measure of risk for the sake of financial stability. Although protection of workers is a moral obligation of every U.S. employer, the function of occupational safety is essentially an economic proposition. Forced to work within budgetary constraints, safety managers pragmatically target ‘low hanging fruit’—hazards that are most harmful or frequent; may result in costly injuries; or are easily controlled. Latent or inherent risks—of minimal probability and difficult to identify, eliminate, or prevent—are classified as “acceptable risk” and considered above and beyond the scope of management oversight. The legitimacy of “acceptable risk” is logically (and legally) supported by the fact that absolute safety is a humanly impossible goal.

Yet, “acceptable risk” can have unacceptable consequences. Injuries rooted in “acceptable risk” are often reflections of more serious safety problems percolating deep within a seemingly functional system. Any safety expert can tell you that trivial incidents are rarely random, isolated events. Most minor incidents, when scrutinized, are frequently found to be serial precursors of future disaster. “Acceptable risk” is an accident waiting to happen. Moreover, the indiscriminate drip of minor injury is a gradual drain on the bottom line, especially when profit margins are slim or the organization is highly leveraged. Nevertheless, as long as the cost of mitigating “acceptable risk” fails to demonstrate financial benefit, workers remain vulnerable to its potential effects.
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Worst of all, the consequences of “acceptable risk” thwart program sustainability and attainment of World Class Safety, a designation devised by the safety industry to describe the highest pinnacle of safety performance. Failure to manage “acceptable risk” produces roller coaster program outcomes and ensures a consistent level of mediocrity.

Recently, there has been a paradigm shift among the upper echelon of the safety industry. Many believe that it is economically feasible, and actually economically advantageous, to deal with “acceptable risk.” Efforts to mitigate “acceptable risk” inspire significant cost savings, converting safety from an economic liability to a bottom line asset. Attainment of World Class Safety, and all related social and economic benefits, is truly a vision within the realm of possibility. However, there exists no formal, recognized strategy to assist management in implementing processes that specifically target “acceptable risk.” Until now…

The FailSafe Workplace® Management System is a strategy that simultaneously satisfies safety’s antithetical objectives: full protection of workers and preservation of bottom line profits. This strategy, based on the principles and practices of Human Performance Technology (HPT) resolves the paradox of “acceptable risk.” The resolution is transformative, producing an iterative cycle of improvement and long-term sustainability of high performance. The opportunity to mitigate “acceptable risk” reduces the probability of worker injury or fatality to levels far below what is currently believed humanly possible. And optimally, according to documented results, implementation of HPT related programs provide on average a return on investment (ROI) of 8:1. Imagine, for every $1 invested to fight “acceptable risk,” an organization will earn back $8. Imagine a safety program that saves lives, pays for itself, and yields interest, too! The FailSafe Workplace® Management System pushes the envelope of human and economic performance to unimaginable heights.

The FailSafe Workplace® Management System is a breakthrough concept, which inextricably links two established fields of theory and practice: occupational safety and performance management. Ethically, the safety of the American worker should never be compromised because of bottom line concerns. As safety researchers Soediono and Kleiner maintain, “a safe workplace is central to our ability to enjoy health, security, and the opportunity to achieve the American dream”. Presently, very few American companies have discovered the key that unlocks attainment of World Class Safety. Through integration of The FailSafe Workplace® Management System with a workable safety program, World Class Safety is at last a dream come true for every U.S. organization.